Cherry Ames Boxed Set 9-12

by Helen Wells

  Midge stared at her in disgust. “You make me tired, Cherry Ames. I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than a Bohemian apartment in Greenwich Village. Complete with garden.”

  “Garden?” Cherry shook back her thick, dark curls, laughing. “Bertha Larsen said it was so small the chickens on her farm would have ignored it. But last summer we did finally make a little bower out of that tiny, fenced-in back yard. Nasturtiums—”

  “Nasty urchins, you mean,” Midge corrected her with a giggle. “That’s what I called ‘em until I grew up.”

  Cherry ignored this golden opportunity to point out to Midge that she was still far from grown up. “Heavenly blue morning-glories all over the fence,” she went on reminiscently. “And in the fall we even coaxed a few marigolds into blooming. Mai Lee has a green thumb with flowers.”

  Suddenly Cherry was homesick for the Spencer Club and its headquarters in downtown New York. It was only a passing, although poignant, longing, but for a moment she stared unseeingly down at her empty plate.

  They were all busy with their districts while she sat here in bed, doing nobody any good and probably causing the whole household unnecessary trouble.

  “Completely silly, this business of breakfast in bed,” she told Midge grimly. “Because I’m all better now. Really and truly I am. I don’t need a whole month of this petting and spoiling. Ten days just being home has done the trick. I must get back to work.”

  But Midge wasn’t listening. “All the celebrities you met in Greenwich Village,” she was saying enviously. “Tell me again, Cherry, about the Indian woman who wanders around swathed in veils. And the barefoot, bearded man in the flowing, white toga.”

  “It’s not those people I miss,” Cherry said under her breath. “It’s the people who need me; my district families. But Dorothy Davis said I couldn’t come back until my month was up. Oh, how I wish I dared hope I’d get a letter from the steamship line today!”

  She clapped her hand over her mouth too late. She didn’t want Midge or anybody else, except Charlie, to know anything about her dream of a ship’s-nurse job; at least not until everything was settled. If there was such a thing as a dream coming true.

  She glanced sharply at Midge. Had she heard what Cherry had muttered about a steamship line?

  Midge either hadn’t heard or was pretending she hadn’t heard. She was staring unconcernedly up at the ceiling.

  “Have you thought about what you want for Christmas, Cherry?” Midge asked. “There’s no sense in asking you what you want for your birthday. People who have birthdays the day before Christmas are out of luck so far as I’m concerned. It must be awful having them come so close together.”

  “It isn’t awful at all.” Cherry laughed. “It’s fun celebrating two days in a row. And, no, I haven’t thought about what I want for either Christmas or my birthday. Any suggestions?”

  Midge, still staring up at the ceiling, said, “Next Monday, a week from today, is Chrismas. You’d better write a letter to Santa Claus. But quick.”

  Cherry lowered the tray to the floor. She relaxed against the pillows thinking:

  “I know what I want for my birthday. And Christmas. A letter from that nice Dr. Davis who interviewed me before I left New York. A letter on the exciting-looking, glamorous, steamship line’s stationery. A letter saying that one Cherry Ames has been hired as ship’s nurse for the duration of a twelve-day cruise.”

  She closed her eyes and let her imagination carry her away. The Caribbean! Buccaneers. Pirates. The Spanish Main, Christmas on the high seas. That meant Christmas without Mother and Dad and Charlie. A lump swelled in Cherry’s throat. Then she sat up, laughing at herself:

  “Here I am getting homesick while I’m still at home! There’s not a chance in the world that long waiting list has dwindled down to my size.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” It was Midge’s voice, elaborately disinterested.

  Cherry’s black eyes popped wide open. “Midge! You know something I don’t know.”

  Midge pursed her lips and whistled a bar or two of “Anchors Aweigh.” Then she said, “The only thing I know is what I just happened to hear you say to Charlie last evening.”

  Cherry gasped. “What did I say?”

  “You said, ‘Oh, Charlie, do you think I have a chance?’ And Charlie said: ‘I feel it in my bones, honey. You’d better go shopping for whatever feminine gear a cruise nurse needs in the Caribbean.’ ”

  “Midge Fortune!” Cherry’s mother appeared in the doorway, mildly scolding. “What do you mean by sitting on Cherry’s mail? I told you to let her read it in peace over breakfast!”

  Mail! Cherry sucked in a deep breath. Mail!

  Midge slid to the floor, dragging half the comforter with her. “Nothing but a silly old ad from a steamship company. I was going to throw it away.”

  But Cherry had already pounced on the long, flag-bedecked envelope. It was addressed to Miss Cherry Ames, R.N. Neatly typed above the row of tiny United States and South American flags in the upper left-hand corner was the name:

  “Dr. Fowler Davis, Medical Department.”

  CHAPTER II

  “Bon Voyage!”

  CHERRY READ THE LETTER FROM DR. DAVIS FOR THE second time—out loud. She felt like laughing and crying at once and her voice was so shaky she had to read it for the third time before Mrs. Ames finally understood.

  The nurse who had been engaged to sail aboard the Julita on December twenty-second had suddenly been taken ill. The applicants ahead of Cherry on the list had withdrawn their names for the duration of the holidays. Dr. Davis was taking Cherry’s acceptance for granted—unless she wired him to the contrary.

  Cherry looked up from the letter and waited for the verdict. Would her mother he overwhelmingly disappointed because Cherry was not going to be home for Christmas after all? Would she call in Dr. Joe? Would they all insist she was not yet strong enough to go back on duty?

  Cherry held her breath. The ship would sail at noon, Friday, December twenty-second! Four days and a few hours from this very minute. That left her hardly time enough to get her clothes and uniforms together and catch the first train to New York! The letter had said she was to report for instructions to the secretary of the medical department on Wednesday afternoon if possible. The Julita was due in from its twelve-day cruise that morning. She would probably have an opportunity to meet the ship’s doctor Wednesday afternoon at the steamship line’s offices on the pier. She must wire her acceptance at once.

  Cherry’s mind raced ahead. She hadn’t done a bit of Christmas shopping yet. She could do that in New York Wednesday morning and all day Thursday. She ought to be calling about trains and making reservations now, sending a telegram to the Spencer Club. The room she shared with Gwen would be waiting for her. And that reminded Cherry that she must pay her share of the January rent before sailing, just in case the Julita was delayed by bad weather.

  Tears filmed her eyes. Half of her wanted to go; the other half wanted to stay right here in Hilton. Through a blur she saw her mother’s face, smiling down at her.

  “Why, Cherry darling,” Mrs. Ames was saying with just a suspicion of a catch in her voice. “It’s wonderful! The very thing. Dr. Joe and I were saying only yesterday that you need a change and a dose of good, hot sun. We thought of Florida. But this is much better. Your father and Charlie will be so happy for you.”

  Cherry was out of bed, scrambling through tangled sheets and blankets to throw her arms around her mother. “Oh, Mrs. Ames, ma’am,” she laughed and cried at once. “You’re just about the understandingest mother a registered nurse ever had!”

  The rest of the morning was a dizzy whirl of excitement. Dad came home for lunch with the train and Pullman tickets in his pocket. “Cherry Ames, Ship’s Nurse!” He gave her a mock salute.

  Charlie nagged her constantly with useless instructions. “Don’t forget, honey, from now on stairs are ladders, floors are decks, beds are bunks—”

  �
�Oh, stop it, Charlie!” Cherry clapped her hand lightly over his mouth. “The Julita is a luxury liner, not a transport or a destroyer. It’s a house, I’ll have you know. A mansion, I mean. Dr. Davis showed me pictures and a deck plan of her sister ship when he interviewed me two weeks ago. They have windows, not portholes; a dining room, a living room, and a library. Even a night club that opens onto a veranda above the swimming pool.”

  Charlie tugged at his blond hair in mock bewilderment. “Doesn’t sound very nautical to me.” He hopped around the room in a very bad imitation of a sailor’s hornpipe.

  Midge began to chant to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell”:

  “Cherry’s going to sea,

  Cherry’s going to sea,

  Heigh-ho, the Cherrio,

  Cherry’s going to sea!”

  Charlie topped it off with a hastily improvised ballad on the dangers of the pirate-infested Caribbean. He brought in Captain Kidd, Drake, and Morgan, and ended with Cherry walking the plank by order of Long John Silver.

  What seemed like minutes later, Cherry was tensely trying to go to sleep in an upper berth of a streamliner speeding to New York. The night was endless, but the next day passed all too quickly.

  She had hardly made out her Christmas shopping list and gathered her scattered thoughts when she found herself in the dim hallway of the Greenwich Village apartment house. Good old No. 9! Tacked in a row beside the doorbell were the Spencer Club’s professional cards: Gwen’s, Vivi’s, Bertha’s, Josie’s, Mai Lee’s and, last but not least, a faintly dusty one on which were engraved the words:

  CHERRY AMES, R.N.

  Cherry was tempted. None of them would be home until after six. It was hardly five-thirty now. None of them had had the faintest hint of her new job. Why not give them the surprise of their young lives?

  She set down her suitcase and scrabbled through her wallet for a fresh card. Under her name she carefully added in bold, block printing, “Ship’s Nurse.” Giggling, she substituted the new card for the old one. That would give them a jolt. Gwen’s eyes would bug right out of her head.

  Cherry unlocked the blue door and slipped into the ground-floor apartment. The living room with the gold-and-white sprigged wallpaper looked just the same: Tidy, but not too tidy, with a pleasant, lived-in look. There were ashes under a huge, half-burnt log in the handsome fireplace. Books and magazines over-flowed from the low shelves under the windows facing the street. The gold gauze curtains they had all helped make had a freshly laundered crispness.

  “I’ll bet Bertha did that.” Cherry smiled to herself and went down the hall to the bedroom she shared with Gwen. Slowly she unpacked the few things she would need before sailing.

  It seemed strange to be the only one home. And it seemed much stranger not to be tired and harried at the end of a working day. Luxuriating in the peace and quiet of the normally hectic apartment, she donned a warm flannel housecoat and bunny-toed scuffs. It was so cold she could see her breath. That janitor! He insisted too much heat was unhealthy.

  In the tiny kitchenette Cherry fixed herself a cup of scalding tea and two thick slices of cinnamon toast. Munching between sips she wandered into the back parlor. She laughed as the sight of the blue furniture reminded her of that scrape. Another “Ames Folly,” that one. The janitor had been furious when he discovered that the girls, at Cherry’s suggestion, had painted the dingy chairs, table, and sideboard without his permission. But it had all ended happily.

  Cherry heard the rattle of a key in the front door lock. Quickly she dumped her cup and saucer in the sink and hurried down the hall. It was red-haired Gwen with a smudge of subway soot on the end of her pert, freckled nose.

  “Cherry Ames!”

  “Gwenthyan Jones!”

  Sturdy arms hugged Cherry tightly. “We got your wire, but we didn’t believe a word of it. What gives? Why come back with Christmas less than a week away?”

  “Oh, dear,” Cherry moaned inwardly. “She didn’t even notice my new card. What a fine jolt that turned out to be.”

  She opened her mouth to explain and then Bertha arrived, laden down with bundles of groceries. After that, Mai Lee showed up with Vivian right on her heels. Everybody talked at once, bombarding Cherry with questions. There was such a babel of voices that Cherry’s replies were drowned out. And suddenly there was Josie, blinking bewilderedly behind her glasses.

  “Cherry,” she blurted in her rabbity way. She was holding Cherry’s new card in one gloved hand. “What’s this about you being a ship’s nurse? Are you going to give up your district?”

  “Ship’s nurse,” the others shouted in unison. “Who’s a ship’s nurse? Ames, you fiend! You’ve been holding out on us!”

  Cherry backed away from them, stumbled, and sat down hard on the sofa, minus one scuff. They crowded around her excitedly, Mai Lee curling up on the worn carpet at her feet.

  Bertha came to the rescue. “Girls, girls! Let her get her breath. Gwen, build a fire while I put the perishables in the icebox. They’ll freeze in here if I don’t.” She bustled out to the kitchenette.

  Gwen grumbled but went to work with crushed paper and kindling. Soon the log was blazing cheerily. Bertha came back with six cups of steaming hot tomato juice on a tray.

  “Now,” she said, settling her plump body in a chair. “Begin at the beginning, Cherry.”

  Cherry told them the whole thrilling story, apologizing, “I didn’t know myself until I got Dr. Davis’s letter yesterday morning. I didn’t even give Mother a hint. I honestly didn’t think I had a chance.”

  “Oh, Cherry, it’s too good to be true!” Vivian’s soft hazel eyes were wide with enthusiasm.

  Cherry felt a twinge of remorse. Vivian needed a rest and change as much as Cherry did, but there was not a trace of envy in her warm smile.

  “It’s just what the doctor ordered, Cherry,” Josie laughed.

  “You lucky, lucky girl,” Gwen shouted excitedly.

  “I’m so glad for you, Cherry.” Mai Lee quietly clapped her small ivory hands in approval. “You deserve it.”

  “I should say she does,” Bertha Larsen cried emphatically. “I only hope they don’t work you to death. Oh, my aching feet. At least you won’t have to climb umpteen flights of stairs every day.”

  Cherry’s black eyes twinkled. “You wouldn’t swap jobs with me for anything, Bertha, and you know it. You’re in love with your district. All of you are. I miss my own patients so, sometimes I ache all over.”

  “A different kind of ache from mine,” Gwen sniffed, rubbing her ankles as she toasted her stockinged feet in front of the fire. “Me, I’m so jealous I’m green. A Caribbean cruise! Moonlit decks! Soft tropical breezes! While the rest of us plod our weary way through knee-deep snowdrifts.” She grinned affectionately at Cherry. “I don’t envy you the hot sun though. I freckle and peel like anything.”

  It had started to snow again so instead of going out they voted to have supper on low tables around the fire. Bertha produced a delicious warmed-over lamb stew. “It always tastes better the second day,” she said, ladling out generous portions.

  Gwen, complaining good-naturedly, donned overshoes and went out for vanilla ice cream. Cherry insisted upon making hot fudge sauce to go with it. “Stop treating me like a guest. I’m not a visiting nurse. And I know you’re all ten times as tired as I am.”

  But Cherry was tired, she discovered an hour later. She fell asleep, as she said afterward, a split second before her head touched the pillow.

  She breakfasted with the girls the next morning and shooed them out of the kitchen as she stacked the dishes.

  “I’ll clean up; you haven’t time. The stores won’t be open for more than an hour and my appointment with the medical secretary isn’t until this afternoon.” She added: “I’m kind of excited about that. I believe I’m going to meet the doctor who’ll be my boss on the cruise.”

  “And he’ll be young and handsome, if I know the Ames luck.” Gwen chuckled. “Watch out for that trop
ical moon. You’ll come back engaged sure as anything.”

  Cherry’s red cheeks flushed even redder. “Go ‘long with you, Jones.” She gave Gwen a little push. “He’ll probably be ancient and decrepit with a long gray beard. And a very nasty disposition.”

  But Gwen’s prediction, not Cherry’s, came true. Dr. Kirk Monroe was not only young and handsome, but he had very pleasant manners. Miss Henry, the secretary of the medical department, introduced them in her office after she had given Cherry a sketchy idea of what her duties aboard ship would be like.

  “It’s all very flexible, Miss Ames.” She smiled. “Miss Davis highly recommended you. Said you had an uncanny knack of being able to get along with all sorts of people. That’s important.”

  The compliment made Cherry’s dark eyes dance. “I like all sorts of people,” she admitted.

  “Good. Of course,” Miss Henry went on, “people do get seasick off Hatteras. And every now and then a member of the crew has an accident. Even more rarely a nurse has to assist at an emergency operation, such as an appendectomy. But, by and large, the people who go on our pleasure cruises are a healthy lot. They go for the fun of it; not because they’re invalids or convalescents.”

  She swiveled around in her chair and pointed out the window. “You can get a glimpse of the Julita now. The snowstorm last night delayed her arrival. She docked about an hour ago.”

  Cherry leaned forward eagerly. Riding in a taxi along the pier-lined North River, she had seen lots of ships. Now she was going to see her own. But, straining her eyes, she saw nothing but two black smokestacks rising above a row of lifeboats. Nevertheless, those smokestacks were the chimneys of what was going to be her home-at-sea for twelve whole days!

  “It all sounds so wonderful,” she told Miss Henry. “I love my work, but I hope everybody stays well. I can’t imagine anything more disappointing than getting sick on a pleasure cruise.”

  “As a matter of fact,” the secretary went on, “we did have a really serious case on the Julita’s last trip. One of those unpredictable, once-in-a-lifetime things. Pulmonary thrombosis. The patient, a man of seventy-odd, died shortly after they took him ashore in Curaçao.”