"Off Sadie Whirtle," said Kern, rocking backward and forward in her chair. "On'y I don't see anything comical in it."
And then she giggled for some time.
The talk and stoo went forward cheerfully. Beside the Goldnagels, on the ground floor, these two women were the doctor's only fellow lodgers, for Mister Garland, of the wanderlust, had not visited his family since the day in October, and so hardly counted. In the early weeks of the doctor's tenancy, which began only last September, he had walked three times a day to the Always Open Lunch Room, known among the baser sort as the Suicide Club, and had then become possibly the most discriminating judge of egg-sandwiches in all the city. Later, having made the better acquaintance of the Garlands, he had rightly surmised that the earnings derivable from a medical boarder might not be unacceptable in that quarter. The present modus vivendi, then worked out, had proved most satisfactory to all, from both the financial and the social viewpoints.
"I wisht I had a red satin dress, and a necklace all pearls, and was going to the party, too, and had a dark sad-faced man with a mustache and a neye-glass engaged to me, like a count. I wisht I was a Lady," said Kern.
"You don't need a red satin dress to be a lady."
"It'd come easier, kinder, with the dress, Mr. V.V. And I wisht I had a writin'-desk, too. And a founting pen."
"Lawk's sakes, Kern, an' I've asked you a hundred times what would you do with a writin'-desk, now?"
"Mommer, I'd set at it."
"An' what time you got for settin', I'd like to know? Fairy-dreamin' again!"
"An' I'd keep notes in it in the pigeonholes. Like it says in my Netiquette."