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.
WAITING FOR A LETTER
207
“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, fl uffy 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.
208
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
“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 fi nally 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 fl owers.”
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.
WAITING FOR A LETTER
209
They
were all busy with their districts while she sat here in bed, doing nobody any good and probably caus-ing 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 fl owing, 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 forChristmas, Cherry?” Midge asked. “There’s no sense in asking you 210
CHERRY
AMES,
CRUISE
NURSE
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 fl oor. 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.
WAITING FOR A LETTER
211
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 fl oor, 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, fl ag-bedecked envelope. It was addressed to Miss Cherry Ames, R.N. Neatly typed above the row of tiny United States and South American fl ags in the upper left-hand corner was the name:
“Dr. Fowler Davis, Medical Department.”
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