“Mr. V.V., I’m so hongry.”

“I know it, poor child.  Just a little more patience now:  you’re going to begin to get better right away, and before you know it you’ll be sitting down to the finest dinners that ever you popped into your mouth.  Ring the bell and order what you like—­stuff, stuff, stuff—­banquets all day long.  And that reminds me,” said he, hurrying away from this too toothsome subject—­“your holiday, as soon as you feel strong enough to travel.  It’s high time we were making pretty definite plans about that.  The question is, what sort of place do you think you’d like to go to?”

“Oh!...  Do you mean—­any place—­go to any place I like?”

“Any place in the world,” replied Mr. V.V., the magnificent.

Kern thought for some time, her eyes on the window, and then said: 

“I’d like to go to some place where there’s mountains and a sea.”  She added, as if to soften the baldness of her specifications, the one word:  “Like.”

Mr. V.V. thought of Marathon, which on the whole didn’t promise to suit.  He was visited with an ingenious idea, viz.:  that Kern should go to no less than two places on her convalescent tour, one containing Mountains, the other containing a Sea!  And so it was settled to the general satisfaction....

“Only hurry up and get well,” said the tall doctor, “or you’ll find the crowds gone from Atlantic City before you get there.”

He had risen, but paused, looking down at the flushed little face in which the sunken dark eyes looked bigger than ever.  Thoughts of himself were in his mind; and they were not pleasant thoughts.

“Kern,” said he—­for he had by now fallen into the family habit, abandoning the too stately Corinne—­“suppose you were absolutely well, and had a thousand dollars, what would you do for yourself with it?”

It was a game well calculated to interest the little girl even in the listlessness and apathy of fever.  Kern spoke first of duck, of French fried potatoes and salads rich with mayonnaise; then, hurrying on with increasing eagerness, of taking a steamer to Europe and buying her and mommer Persian clo’es....

Her medical adviser was obliged to check these too exciting flights.

“I mean more as a—­as an occupation,” he explained.  “You know, of course, you’ve bunched your last cheroot.  I was wondering what sort of nicer work you would like to fit yourself for—­later on?”

Kern boggled a good deal over the answer to this, but finally got it out.

“What I’d truly like to be, Mr. V.V., if I could, is a writer, sort of.”

“Oh!...  Yes, yes—­a writer!  Well, that’s very nice.  A very nice occupation—­writing.”

The child was encouraged to go on.  Staring at him with her grave investigatory eyes, she said, quite timidly: 

“Mr. V.V., do you think I could ever be an eppig poet, sir?...  Like Homer the Blind Bard, y’ know?”