This note was written in the best jokey vein throughout, beginning, “Miss Corinne Garland, City—­Dear Madam,” and signed, “Your most obliged and obedient servant, Writing-Desk."...

It had been the intention of Mr. V.V. to call personally at the sick-room before breakfast, to see how Kern liked the arrival and appearance of Writing-Desk.  But Miss Masters frustrated him at the door, saying that the child’s heart was set upon conveying her thanks by formal note, and she had worried and fretted so over being refused that it seemed best to give her her way, particularly as she did not seem so well to-day.  And in his disappointment over these tidings, the doctor presently forgot the desk entirely.

However, Kern’s note arrived in the office an hour later, through the Kindness of Miss Masters, as the envelope advised.  Mr. V.V. suspended a sentence to one of his sick in the middle to read it: 

     MY DEAR DR. VIVIAN: 

Oh, Mr. V.V., how can I ever thank you for given me this lovely Writen Desk.  I greatly appreciate your kind gift.  Just putten my hands on it makes me so happy, I could cry, oh the soft feel this Pretty wood has got to it.

Your kind thought of me at this time has indeed pleased me.  One is never so appreciative of the thought of one’s friends, if I can call you my Friend, Mr. V.V., as when one lies in pain upon a sickbed, th’o I have no pain.  It’s the lovlyest sweetest dearest Desk ever was Mr. V.V., and how can me and Mommer ever make up for all you done for us.  I don’t know.  I have every hope for a speedy change for the better in my condition, and I never dreamed Id’ have a Ladys Writen Desk truly, or haven one would make me oh so Happy.  My first note, dear Dr. Vivian, goes to you.

     With repeated thanks for your considerate thought of me
     during my illness, believe me, with kind remembrances,

     Yours very cordially,

     Your faithful friend CORINNE.

The young man distributed mental italics as he read.  He detected at sight the footprints of the Netiquette and Complete Letter Writer.  But he did not smile once as he read and reread the odd little mosaic, and folded it at last and put it away in a pigeonhole of its own.  No, his stabbing thought was only, Why didn’t I do it all long ago?...  Why?...

And similar things he thought next morning, and the next and next.  For Kern did not get well, no matter what the calendar said, no matter how loyally Writing-Desk stood at her elbow to serve her, as It had said in the Note.  Her morning temperature shot up a degree again, and there it stood day after day, and would not go down.  Kern obviously grew thinner and weaker.  And there came a day when the President of the Settlement Association, Mr. Stewart Byrd, came in person to the Dabney House before ten o’clock, and sent all the workmen away.  He said there must be no noise about the place that day....