Cherry Ames Boxed Set 13-16

by Helen Wells

  But Charlie understood. Charlie was as fair as his twin was dark, but they both had the same pert features. And Charlie was as much in love with preparing for his engineering career as Cherry had been with hers.

  “Of course, nothing may come of it,” Cherry had told him one night as they crunched through the snow on their way home from an early movie. “But I can dream, can’t I? A ship’s nurse on a luxury liner complete with swimming pool! You and Dad shoveling snow while I’m taking sun baths on the promenade deck.”

  “Wait a minute!” Charlie had stopped and swung her around so fast that her overshoes skidded on an icy patch in the sidewalk. “Let me get this straight. Are you working your way to South America or going as a passenger?”

  Cherry giggled. “Both. I understand the work’s not too hard except when there’s an epidemic of seasickness or an emergency of some sort. Besides, I like to work. I’d be bored to death lying in the sun and dunking myself in the pool all day long.”

  Charlie chuckled. “You’ll run into seasickness, honey, the first night out. But good. Rough seas when you hit the Gulf Stream around Cape Hatteras. Wouldn’t be surprised if you landed in sick bay yourself.”

  Cherry pretended to pout. “You’re just jealous, you landlubber you!”

  “Seriously, honey, it’s a wonderful idea. I hope you get the job. You deserve it, and the change will fix you right up. You’ll be as good as new when you come back; fat and brown with those fabulous red cheeks of yours.”

  “Keep your fingers crossed, Charlie, please.” Cherry had tucked her arm affectionately through his. “There’s a long waiting list.”

  There it was again. That disheartening little phrase: just three simple words, “Long waiting list!”

  Now Cherry jumped out of bed, closed the window, and popped into the warmth of the bathroom to brush her teeth and dash icy cold water into her face, “I won’t think about it any more,” she resolutely mumbled into the towel. “I’m almost halfway through my month’s vacation now. If word doesn’t come soon I wouldn’t be able to take the job anyway.”

  She snatched up a warm bed jacket of quilted blue silk and hopped hack into bed, obeying Dr. Joe’s orders to the letter. Then counting on her fingers she said out loud:

  “I’ve already had twelve days. The round-trip cruise is another twelve days. Twelve and twelve make twenty-four. One month is four weeks. There are twenty-eight days in four weeks …”

  There was a knock on her door. It opened a crack. Midge’s face appeared. “Talking to herself. That means money in the bank. Or that she’s losing her mind.”

  After Midge’s face came the rest of her; or at least what you could see behind the enormous breakfast tray she was carrying.

  “Good morning, Miss Fortune,” Cherry greeted her teen-age neighbor, Dr. Joe’s mischievous daughter. “Since when did you start specialing me?” She crossed her legs under her and reached out hungrily for the tray.

  Midge sniffed. “Specialing indeed. I’m not your private duty nurse. I’m your mother’s helper, that’s all.” She curled up at the foot of the bed adding, “And my father’s private detective. I’m to sit right here and see that you eat every morsel on the tray. Even that burnt crust on the toast I made.”

  Cherry gratefully gulped down a large glass of fresh orange juice. “There’s my vitamin C for the day. And I like burnt toast. Especially when you can coat it with sweet butter and homemade strawberry jam.” She sighed in ecstasy. “Did you scramble these delicious, fluffy eggs, Midge Fortune?”

  It was, of course, a rhetorical question. Midge didn’t bother to answer. It was an accepted fact in Hilton that harum-scarum Midge was about as domestically inclined as a longshoreman.

  After Dr. Fortune’s wife died, Midge had tried in her own way to keep house for him between school and mischievous pranks. But her own way was so topsy-turvy that Dr. Joe might have become anemic if he hadn’t been frequently invited to supper by Mrs. Ames. Cherry herself had often swept and dusted the Fortune house; made beds, seen to it that the kitchen cupboards and the refrigerator were stocked with easy-to-prepare but vitamin- and mineral-packed meals.

  “It’s wonderful to be home,” Cherry said, completely dismissing her dream of a Caribbean cruise. “I’m just beginning to realize how much I missed you all. As Gwen kept saying, ‘Life in Greenwich Village is glamorous and exciting,’ but—but …” She nibbled thoughtfully on a piece of bacon. “I guess I’m pretty much of a homebody in spite of all my wanderings.”

  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 Caribbe
an! 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.”

  In case you missed Cherry Ames, Boarding School Nurse …

  CHAPTER I

  Lisette

  CHERRY WISHED THE TRAIN WOULD GO FASTER. SHE was still out of breath from running for it. She pressed her cheek against the window to admire the green fields and fertile farms through which the local train poked along. Cherry’s mother, who knew the headmistress of the Jamestown School for Girls from their own school days, had warned her that the school was deep in the country. Fortunately, it was not too far from Hilton, Illinois, which meant that she would be able to spend all school holiday vacations at home.

  As the boarding school nurse, she would have full charge of the school infirmary. It would be fun to work with young people and a refreshing change from her last job—an unexpectedly thrilling assignment as nurse to a country doctor—something new, something different. If there was anything Cherry enjoyed, it was meeting new people. She was glad that she was a nurse because nursing, in its many branches, provided an Open sesame to new and exciting experiences—and because more importantly, a nurse can help to alleviate human suffering. She remembered what her twin brother Charlie had said jokingly when he put her on this train in Hilton:

  “Don’t set this boarding school on its ear. Wherever you go, twin, you make things happen, but you bring doggoned good nursing too.”

  It gave Cherry a good, warm feeling to know that her pilot brother, and her parents, too, were proud of her. They had made that clear during this past week, when they’d had such a satisfying family reunion, in their big, old-fashioned house. The week’s rest had left Cherry’s cheeks glowing rose-red and her black eyes sparkling. Even her jet-black curls shone with extra good health. She felt fully ready to tackle her new job.

  She stood up, slim and tall, to stretch for a moment and noticed again the girl at the other end of the car. Only about fourteen years old, and small for her age, she was absorbed in a thick volume which lay open on her knees. The girl leafed through several pages, then as if finding what she sought, read eagerly—leafed, read, searched again. She read, Cherry thought idly, as if that book held all the answers to all her questions—whatever they were.

  When the train pulled into Jamestown, Cherry noticed that the girl was getting off, too. They were the only two passengers who alighted. Jamestown consisted of a crossroads and a few stores, sheltered by magnificent oak trees. Only a few farmers, driving in for supplies, were outdoors in the heat of the afternoon. Cherry looked around for a station wagon or other car from the school, half expecting to be met. Hadn’t Mrs. Harrison received her telegram? Perhaps she should telephone the school. Then Cherry spied a sedan with a sign in its windshield: Taxi.

  But the young girl from the train was already making arrangements with the taxi driver. Cherry heard her say:

  “—to the school, the Jamestown School.”

  Cherry approached them uncertainly. This was probably the one and only taxi in town, and in the country people often shared rides.

  “I beg your pardon, but I’m going to the school, too, and since there’s no school car here, I wonder—”

  “Please share the taxi with me,” the girl said at once and pleasantly.

  So they stepped in and settled back. The driver started off through leafy tunnels formed by the arching oaks. Cherry and the young girl did not speak for several minutes. It was one of those ripe, golden afternoons when it feels as if summer will last forever, yet the school term would begin within a few days. Cherry was arriving early in order to get the infirmary in good shape, but what was a student doing here so early, she wondered.

  Cherry glanced at the girl who had drawn away into her own corner of the seat. She was slight and pale, with a cloud of dark hair falling onto her shoulders.

  “Since we’re both going to the school,” Cherry offered, “we might introduce ourselves. I’m Cherry Ames.”

  The girl smiled. “I’m Lisette Gauthier.” She was rather shy. “Is this your first time at the school?”

  “Yes, it is. Yours, too?”

  “Yes, Miss Ames.” The girl glanced away, hugging the big book to her. She seemed to be struggling with shyness, then overcame it in a rush. “I came to the school a week early, you know.” She did not say why. “I went into Riverton to do some errands, and to visit the library. It’s bigger than the school library.”

  “What an eager student!” Cherry exclaimed. “Studying before the term even begins.”

  “Oh—no—I mean, yes. It isn’t exactly studying.” Lisette did not reveal what the thick book was. After that, the girl sat quiet and guarded in her corner.

  The taxi drove on past gardens where the scent of flowers floated on the air. Cherry remarked on the delicious fragrance, and—to choose another safe conversational subject—she mentioned her contact with Mrs. Harrison, the headmistress and owner of the Jamestown School.

  “I’ve never met Mrs. Harrison but her letters have been awfully nice,” Cherry said. “I’m looking forward to meeting her this afternoon.”

  Lisette turned and this time her smile had real warmth. “Everyone loves Mrs. Harrison. You will, too, I know you will. She’s—well, you’ll see! Can you imagine anyone else who’d let me come to the chateau a week early, and who’d even—”

  The girl broke off, as if she had been about to say too much. Cherry filled the embarrassed silence with a cheerful remark about the fun of starting a new term, especially at a new school. Lisette looked at her with gratitude. Her eyes were ebony black and seemed to fill her ivory face. A funny little sprite, Cherry thought, first too shy to talk, then talking almost too much …

  All of a sudden the taxi slowed, and the driver, grumbling, coasted the car to the side of the road and hopped out for a look at the motor. He poked and examined and then went to peer in the gas tank.

  “But the gas gauge reads better’n half full,” he muttered.

  Cherry glanced at it. So it did.

  “Gauge isn’t workin’,” the driver said. “Gas tank is bone dry. I’ll have to go for gas. A mile’s walk in this broiling sun to the nearest gas station!”

  He stamped off, carrying a metal container. The two girls were left alone together in the back seat of the sedan. Trees shaded them, but still it was going to be a long, warm wait.

  “What wouldn’t I give for a soda right now!” Cherry said. “Chocolate for you?”

&
nbsp; “Chocolate for me,” Lisette agreed. Her eyes danced like Cherry’s own. She glanced at Cherry with obvious curiosity, although it was apparent that she would never intrude with questions. Cherry tried to ease things for her.

  “You think I’m one of the new teachers, don’t you?”

  “Well, you look a little bit too young and too—”

  “Too what?” Cherry laughed.

  Lisette swallowed. “Too young and fun-loving.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m to be the school nurse.”

  “Oh! That’s nice. I’ve always sort of wanted to be a nurse.”

  “Lots of girls want to,” Cherry replied. “A lot of them really do it, too.”

  “It’s a sympathetic profession,” Lisette said thoughtfully. “I always think of a nurse as a friend.”

  “Well, I hope you and I will be friends.”

  Lisette responded with such a glowing face that Cherry could not help but respond, too.

  “I don’t think,” Lisette said very seriously, “that a few years’ difference in our ages is important.” She pretended to be busy adjusting the car window. “Do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  Then Lisette was telling her, as fast as the words would tumble out, about her scholarship and her family and her wonderful luck in coming to the Jamestown School.

  “All my life I’ve wanted to come here! And father always wanted me to attend boarding school. A really good one! I couldn’t tell this to everybody, Miss Ames, but honestly, I’d never be here if it had been left up to my poor papa.” She said papa, French fashion. “It’s the greatest luck that I’ve a scholarship. Imagine. A year’s scholarship and my room in the dormitory, everything, a regular guest!”

  “It is wonderful,” Cherry said. “I didn’t know boarding schools gave scholarships.”

  “They don’t very often. It’s just that Mrs. Harrison is so generous. Not that she can afford—I mean—”