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 The applicants ahead of Cherry on the list had withdrawn their names for the duration of the holidays.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 tropical 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.”
She looked up as the door behind Cherry opened. “Ah, here’s Dr. Monroe. He’s in charge of sick bay aboard the Julita. He’ll teach you the ropes after you’re aboard ship. Doctor, this is Miss Cherry Ames.”
Cherry jumped up and wheeled to face the young man in the doorway. He was as tall and well-built as Charlie, with gray eyes and thick, wavy, brown hair. Cherry thrilled at the sight of his navy-blue uniform with the gold caducei on his sleeves. The second day out, when the weather turned warm, he would change to whites. With his deep coat of even tan, Cherry decided, he would look very handsome in whites.
With sudden embarrassment she realized that she was one of the two principal actors in a little mutual-admiration scene. Dr. Monroe’s eyes were dark with approval as he grinned down at her flushed, rosy face.
“He likes my looks, anyway,” Cherry thought. She hoped he wouldn’t notice how her pulse was racing when they shook hands. “Now, if he only likes me, we should make a grand team.”
Cherry was glad she had worn her new chocolate-brown suit and the cream-colored blouse that tied in a perky bow under her chin. Melted snow glistened in the dark curls that peeped out from under the brim of her poinsettia-red hat.
Dr. Monroe shook hands warmly. “I’m awfully glad to meet you, Miss Ames.” His voice was deep, sincere, and pleasantly husky. His fingers were the clean, strong, cool fingers of a born surgeon.
“I like him already,” Cherry admitted frankly to herself. “He’s one of those people who are born nice.”
Dr. Monroe took two long steps into the office, handed a portfolio of papers to the secretary. “The report on the pulmonary thrombosis case is in there,” he said, very sober now. “Hate to lose a patient, but, of course, there was nothing anybody could do. Kind of a nice old fellow. Eccentric, but very co-operative.”
Then with a “See you Friday morning” to Cherry he departed.
Cherry, after thanking the secretary for her instructions and advice, left soon afterward. A glance at the nurse’s wrist watch that Charlie had given her when she first started on her career told her she still had an hour more before the stores closed.
Cherry finally finished her Christmas shopping late Thursday afternoon. She had the presents gift-wrapped and mailed from the stores with big “Do Not Open Until Xmas” stickers plastered on the brown outside paper. Then she wandered into a novelty shop. She would buy everyone inexpensive little “stocking” gifts too. Yesterday she had bought “jokes” for every member of the Spencer Club. They were all wrapped and hidden on the top shelf of her closet. Her real present to the club was a check toward the new living-room rug. Cherry’s check would help make that dream come true.
Buying “stocking” presents in the crowded little shop was fun. She bought one of those new syringelike basters for her mother. Cherry squeezed the rubber bulb and decided it was a giant medicine dropper, but would prove useful when the Christmas turkey was roasting in the oven. For Charlie she chose a trick bow tie equipped with an electric battery. He could make it flash on and off by pressing a button in his pocket. A postage-size deck of Old Maid cards for Midge came next. For Dad she decided on a tiny, wooden bottle labeled “Heart’s Desire Perfume.” When uncorked, it revealed a miniature mechanical pencil.
It took a long time to find just the right joke for Dr. Joe. Cherry ended up with an inexpensive fountain pen which the manufacturers claimed could be used for underwater writing. She would enclose a note:
“So you can send me an S O S in case you get sealed up in one of your own test tubes.”
It was late when she finally left the novelty shop with her bundle of little purchases. Even the impersonal New York crowd was bubbling with pre-Christmas spirit. The snow had turned to slush and here and there were frozen patches which made walking difficult. Every now and then some late Christmas shopper slipped and fell. But the atmosphere was so packed with holiday cheer no one seemed to mind these tumbles.
Lighted Christmas trees were on every block. Wreaths of holly decorated the windows of tall apartment buildings. Cherry wedged herself and her packages through the subway doors and swayed helplessly back and forth with the motion of the train, supported by the other passengers. At last she was wearily sloshing up the steps to No. 9.
The minute Cherry opened the blue door she knew that something was wrong; not wrong exactly, but mysterious. Although no sound came from any one of the rooms, she sensed that she was not alone. She frowned, her hand still on the doorknob. All the lurid tales she had heard about Bohemian Greenwich Village came back.
“Gwen? … Josie? … Bertha … Vivi … Mai Lee?”
No answer. For a moment Cherry was almost frightened. Then she shrugged. The inhabitants of Greenwich Village might be informal, but she had always found them very friendly. They were good neighbors, albeit often erratic.
Firmly she closed the door behind her. Then the silence was broken by a giggle. Cherry dropped her packages on the nearest chair. She would know that giggle anywhere. She marched into the living room. Sure enough, crouched behind the sofa was a disheveled-looking Midge Fortune!
Cherry hauled her out and hugged her. “Imp! How in the world did you get here? On a witch’s broomstick?”
Midge was so convulsed with laughter she could only point down the hall. Suddenly all three of the bedroom doors opened simultaneously. First Cherry’s mother’s smiling face popped out; then Dad’s, and, last of all, Charlie’s towhead.
There were hugs and kisses all around. To add to the confusion the Spencer Club came trooping in en masse.
“We were in on the surprise,” Gwen shouted into Cherry’s ear above the uproar. “I left my key with the janitor so they could get in.”
“But how—why?” Cherry felt as though the calendar had been moved ahead. This must be Christmas Eve; not the eve of her sailing.
It was Charlie who finally explained. “Dad suddenly had to come on business with one of the insurance people. We all felt so depressed after you left us in the lurch, ruining our Christmas plans, we decided to come too.”
“We’re going to have sort of a Christmas preview here,” Josie put in. “This very evening.”
“I—I don’t understand,” Cherry said weakly.
Then Bertha came stolidly down the hall bearing a small but perfectly decorated tree. She plunked it in the middle of the living-room table. Miraculously, before Cherry could blink, presents were heaped up around it—presents of all sizes and shapes in colorful wrappings. And on every tag were the words: “To Cherry.”
“We couldn’t bear the thought of you spending Christmas on the high seas without any of us,” Mrs. Ames was saying.
“You’d get all your presents two weeks late,” Mr. Ames added, his eyes twinkling merrily.
Vivian took the floor. “We thought first of mailing them so you’d get them the day after Christmas at Curaçao. But the post office advised us not to. Said anything but air-mail letters would be sure to arrive after your ship had gone on to another port. Then they would have to be forwarded back here again.”
“Open ’em, honey,” Charlie commanded. “And act pleased with mine if it kills you. It can’t be exchanged.”
Cherry finally came out of her daze. “Give me five minutes, please,” she gasped. Scooping up her bundle of “stocking” gifts, she scurried down the hall to her bedroom. She just couldn’t open all those presents under the tree without everyone else opening something too.
It took but a few minutes to wrap Christmasy paper around the little last-minute gifts she had bought for her family and Midge, add them to the Spencer Club jokes, and emerge laden with small packages which she dumped helter-skelter around the tree.
“Now,” she breathed, “everyone has something. Pitch in. I can’t wait.”
Cherry opened her mother’s present first: a luxurious, white terry-cloth beach robe. Cherry stumbled through the wrappings to hug her mother tightly. “You darling.”
Dad’s was a cool, sharkskin spectator sports ensemble—slacks, jacket, and blouse—for going ashore. Cherry kissed and scolded him. “You shouldn’t have done it. I’ll never change back into uniform.”
Charlie urged her to open his gift next. “I bought it all by myself,” he said. “I’m a nervous wreck for fear it won’t fit or you won’t like it.”
Nestling in folds of white tissue paper was a two-piece American-beauty bathing suit of ruffled taffeta. Just the right size and Cherry’s most becoming color. “Charlie,” she gasped. “You angel! I’d completely forgotten I’d have to have something glamorous to swim in.”
There were ridiculously frivolous but attractive beach clogs from Midge and an enormous, rubber-lined beach bag to match from Dr. Joe. And the Spencer Club had chipped in to buy her the loveliest flowered cotton dancing frock Cherry had ever seen.
It was indeed, as Charlie said, “A very Cherry Christmas!”
They had a festive dinner at one huge table in the exotic Hawaiian Room of the Lexington Hotel. Midge was fascinated when the Honolulu dancers did the hula-hula.
Over dessert of fresh pineapple chunks served in their shells, Cherry outlined the cruise. Charlie lightly marked with his fork an accompanying map of the Caribbean and South America on the tablecloth.
“First stop Curaçao,” Cherry told them. “Tuesday morning. And there had better be a big batch of airmail letters waiting for me.”
“There will be.” Midge grinned mysteriously. “You’ll need a truck.”
“Fine.” Cherry hurried on. “Next stopover La Guaira, Venezuela. The next day, Puerto Cabello. Then to Cartagena in Colombia. Ditto about air-mail letters at that port. We go straight back to New York from there.”
Everybody made careful notes. “I’ll check my spelling with an atlas,” Gwen promised. “Otherwise expect no word from me.”
The Ameses and Midge had engaged rooms at the Lexington. They kissed Cherry good night in the lobby. “See you aboard ship tomorrow.”
“I’m going to buy stacks of leis and drape them around your neck the way the Hawaiians do,” Midge threatened. “Aloha,” she finished, proud of the two new words she had added to her vocabulary.
The next minute—or so it seemed to Cherry—it was morning, the morning. Since it was a working day, farewells to the Spencer Club were said over breakfast. Cherry had to repack her suitcase to make room for her Christmas presents. Standing in the icy bedroom it was almost impossible to believe that in a day or so the weather aboard ship would be so balmy she could use every one of her gifts.
Then suddenly, weak-kneed and rather shaky, she was climbing up the Julita’s gangplank. Although the ship would not sail until noon—and it was not yet eleven—several groups of passengers were already aboard. Arm in arm, they trooped along the promenade deck. Others swarmed up the gangplank accompanied by friends who were seeing them off.
Everyone was in a holiday mood. Corsages of exotic orchids were pinned to mink-coated shoulders. Sea gulls circled overhead, mewing catlike. Through the happy shouts and bursts of laughter of the passengers, Cherry heard the intermittent screaming of the winches as the cargo was loaded into the ship’s hold. Bang, roll, clank; bang, roll, clank! Cherry had been told that part of the freight would be unloaded at Curaçao. The island had almost no agriculture and imported millions of cases of American canned goods: tomato juice and paste for the hot Spanish dishes; smoked codfish from New England; celery, onions, green peppers, and all kinds of fruit.
Cherry thrilled all over as she took a deep breath of the salty air. It was heavy with the smell of fresh paint, wet steel, water-soaked wood, and creosote.
Hesitantly, she plunked her suitcase down on the deck. Should she try to work her way through the milling crowds and locate her cabin? Or should she wait until a steward or somebody offered help?
A slightly husky voice behind her settled the matter. “Welcome aboard, Miss Ames.” It was Dr. Monroe, looking as Midge would have said, “out of this world” in his trim uniform. There was a reassuring grin on his lean, tanned face.
“Good morning,” Cherry got out, feeling about as poised as Midge would have felt in similar circumstances. But it was pleasant being on deck with this tall, good-looking man standing protectively beside her.
Then Cherry saw Midge herself galloping up the gangplank with Charlie. Behind them, more sedately, came her father and mother. Cherry proudly introduced her family to Dr. Monroe. Midge was too smitten by the sight of this handsome young man in his glamorous uniform to do anything but stare worshipfully. Time flew. All too soon came the cry “All ashore that’s going ashore!”
Last hugs and kisses. “Bon voyage! Bon voyage!” Big melting snowflakes pelted their upturned faces as they waved to Cherry from the pier. Tears welled up into her eyes. The gangplank was wheeled away, separating her from her family for Christmas. She couldn’t change her mind now.
Someone lightly tapped Cherry’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to drag you away, Miss Ames,” she heard Dr. Monroe say. “There’s been an accident. One of the crew slipped in an oily spot on the engine-room floor. Compound fracture of the right arm.”
Dr. Monroe’s manner was completely professional now. Cherry sensed that this serious-faced young physician never mixed business with pleasure. She respected him for it. With one last hasty kiss blown from the tip of her fingers straight to her mother, she turned and trotted along the deck after her new boss.
The ship was not yet under way, but she had already started in her new role as Cherry Ames, Cruise Nurse!