MR. JONAS’S GROCERY AND DELICATESSEN, CHERRY discovered, was the place to learn anything she wanted to know about her district. Housewives shopped here in the morning for bread and baby foods. Working people dropped in at six for the hasty makings of a supper. The policeman of Cherry’s district, Officer O’Brien, and the high school crowd would come by as late as eleven at night for sandwiches. So Mr. Jonas saw everyone, knew everyone, and—since he was a kindly soul—listened to everybody’s life history and troubles.
The old man was willing to confide to Cherry, because she was district nurse, why the Bennett boy was in disgrace and what was really wrong with Mrs. Castillo’s baby. He was just as likely to discourse to her on literature, the history of the Jews, and the moral writings of Spinoza, if she had time. Learned books lay on top of pickle barrels and she found a music score fallen into the dried-prune bin.
The only thing that kept his mind on business was Mama Jonas’s matriarchal form and deep, deliberate voice calling from the back of the long, narrow shop where she made dill pickles and potato salad—
“Papa! That’s enough philosophy for today! The hot pastrami and corned beef are scorching!”
“Ah, Mama. We do not live by bread alone.”
“You won’t even live by pastrami alone if you don’t stop your talking.”
“Liebchen, I am only explaining to Miss Ames the grammar of classical Hebrew—”
“Miss Ames needs grammar like she needs a hole in the head. Don’t you know she’s busy? And what did you give her for her lunch?”
Mama, roly-poly but commanding, marched up the aisle between shelves and counter to confront tall, thin Papa.
“Abraham! You only gave her a cheese sandwich? On this cold, rainy day, cheese he gives her yet! Have you no judgment? Come, child, I’ll give you hot chicken broth and dumplings.”
Cherry, amused and enjoying this, protested: “But I like this sandwich just fine, Mrs. Jonas. I ordered it!”
Mr. Jonas peered at her out of dreamy blue eyes. “It is not nice to contradict your elders, darling.”
Mama firmly took the sandwich away from Cherry. “I have raised two good sons and a good daughter on chicken broth—not cheese sandwiches. You will eat chicken broth.”
As she strode away for the broth, Mr. Jonas twinkled at Cherry. “With our people, one obeys the mama and the papa. My wife’s mother is still alive and believe me, darling, she rules both Mama and me with an iron hand.”
Cherry chuckled. “And do you rule your children with an iron hand?”
“Why, certainly! Even though they are grown and Jack is a doctor, Ben is a musician, and Ruthie has a millinery shop, still—! They are still our children, aren’t they? Mama and I see to it that they behave themselves. Or else.”
“They behave themselves or else they should drop dead!” Mama had returned with a plate of steaming broth. “Now, little Miss Nurse, eat this. On such a day, cheese already!”
There was nothing for it but to “obey the elders.” Cherry ate obediently and the broth did warm her through. She had never before met such strict, energetic, sharp-tongued, warmhearted, and unabashedly sentimental people as the Jonases. Now, she remembered, she must ask about that old mansion.
Mr. Jonas nodded. “A corner house. The only one in such an old-fashioned style around here.”
“Yes. That’s the Gregory place.”
“Can you tell me about it, Mr. Jonas?”
The old man blinked his blue eyes. “For eighteen years I have known that house…. You are quick, to notice something strange there. Many people pass by and think it is just another old house.”
“But I—I—felt something,” Cherry confessed. “There’s an atmosphere—”
“Of sadness. Of secrets. Yes, one can feel it. Well,” Mr. Jonas cleared his throat, “I will tell you what little I know.”
Eighteen years ago, when he first opened this grocery, a pretty young woman came in alone late one night. She ordered a great many supplies, paid by check, and arranged to have regular weekly orders delivered to her house. The check was signed “Mary Gregory” and the bank honored it.
“She would not talk about herself, or about anything,” Mr. Jonas said, recalling that long-ago visit. “Very nice but very reserved. Shy, I think. And so young, so pretty! But there was something sad about her that made me feel sorry for her even then.”
No one in the neighborhood had known anything about her, Mr. Jonas continued. The house was rumored to belong to a wealthy family named Gregory. But they had long since moved to mid-town New York, and the house had been closed up for many years. Then this young woman had come, all alone, opened the house, and started living there.
“For about a month Miss Gregory—I say ‘miss’ because she wore no wedding ring,” Mr. Jonas went on to Cherry, “traded with me by leaving a note on her doorstep with the order, and a check. I thought nothing of this, I thought she was busy moving in and getting her house in order, I thought soon she would come into my grocery again.” The old man shrugged. “Then, in one note, Miss Gregory asked me to buy meat for her from the butcher. And to send it along with the rest of her regular weekly order. This I did, never suspecting what it meant.”
“And what did it mean?” Cherry breathed.
“That I was never to see her again. Every week for eighteen years my errand boy goes on Thursday to pick up the basket on her doorstep. In it is a check for last week’s order and a note telling what she needs. Friday I pack up the food and my boy goes back to leave it on her step. For eighteen years no one has seen Mary Gregory.”
She was never seen to set foot outside her door. She was not even seen on the porches or in the garden, although some neighborhood people said they had glimpsed a white, ghostly figure on an upstairs balcony on summer evenings. No visitors were ever seen to enter or leave. The postman reported that the only mail which came for her was from a bank, utility and coal companies, and department stores. If neighbors rang her doorbell, no one answered.
Cherry leaned against a wall lined with canned goods and blinked in her own turn.
“But why—?”
“Who knows why?”
“Wouldn’t Officer O’Brien know?”
“Even he does not go in there. He says, ‘Leave her in peace, that is what she wants.’ ”
“But suppose she fell sick, or had an accident, all alone in there!” Cherry cried.
Mr. Jonas shook his head. “We all think of that. The whole neighborhood feels bad about Mary Gregory. Or used to. Not so many people know, any more. The old ones have moved away or forgotten, many others pay no attention. She is like a legend.”
Cherry sputtered. “No one at all ever sees her?”
“Wait. Excuse me. I told you one thing wrong, darling. She does let the furnace man in. He does repairs, too. But the furnace man never sees her. It is always by notes, like with me. The same way with the plumber, and when a man went to put in a new stove. Once a year, a man, dressed very well, goes in. He stays a few hours. I guess he is her lawyer or banker or something. But never, never, does anyone else see her.”
Cherry murmured, “And you still send her food every week?”
“Yes. For eighteen solitary years, the poor soul. And she was so young, so pretty!”
Why had Mary Gregory retired from life? Cherry went out of Mr. Jonas’s grocery-delicatessen shaken.
This was not the time to think about the mysterious recluse, though. Her lunch period was over and Cherry had sick calls awaiting her, including a child ill of scarlet fever. That was a communicable disease and could easily start an epidemic!
“I’ll have to do some pretty sound teaching,” Cherry realized and quickened her pace.
The Terrell cottage was spick-and-span outside and in. Mrs. Terrell, an anxious-eyed young woman, had three small children tugging on her skirts. Jimmy, aged nine, lay sick in one of the bedrooms.
“The doctor says we’re in quarantine, nurse,” the mother said anxiously, “but I’m not sure about what it means nor all the things to do.”
“I’ll show you, Mrs. Terrell,” Cherry calmed her. “I know you have your hands awfully full. I’ll keep coming to help you until you and I get this thing under control.”
“Thank goodness!” Mrs. Terrell said. “I certainly wouldn’t want anybody else’s children to get scarlet fever. Mrs. Kramer upstairs says my three youngest ones are sure to catch it, living in the same house with Jimmy.” She looked at Cherry in helpless appeal.
“Now, don’t you believe such old wives’ tales. There’s no reason why these other three”—Cherry stopped to grin down at the round-eyed toddlers—“shouldn’t be safe, provided you’re careful.”
“Oh, I’ll do anything you say, nurse, anything!”
“Well, let’s start, shall we? Will you get some clean newspapers, please? And I’d like to wash my hands.”
Cherry scrubbed up, tied on her apron, and peeked into the bedroom at the patient. Small Jimmy was hunched up in bed, asleep. His cheeks and forehead were pebbly with rash, and he breathed with difficulty. Cherry decided not to waken him: the first step was to teach his mother safety methods.
Back in the kitchen with Mrs. Terrell, Cherry began asking questions. (Cherry, like the rest of the visiting nurses, had routinely received various antitoxins so that she could nurse contagious disease without becoming ill herself.) The doctor had told Mrs. Terrell that Jimmy must be kept isolated. His father and the other children were to be kept away from him. The children were not to go to kindergarten nor to leave the house, until the quarantine was lifted. However, Mr. Terrell was permitted to go out of the house to work.
“But how do I keep Jim isolated?” the young mother asked the nurse in bewilderment. “The doctor told me some, but I’m all confused—”
Cherry told her how to arrange Jimmy’s room so Mrs. Terrell could take care of him without spreading the disease. First, take away the pictures and rugs, to simplify the problem of cleaning when the illness was over. The curtains were washable, so Cherry said these could remain. The closet was contaminated because, Mrs. Terrell reported, Jimmy had hung his clothes with those of the other children; Cherry said to leave the closet undisturbed, and not to use anything in it. She asked Mrs. Terrell to bring into Jimmy’s room any extra, small table she had, to hold a pitcher and basin for the mother’s own use in washing her hands. Then she lined a waste-basket with newspaper, showing Mrs. Terrell how to do it. Cherry advised her to buy or borrow a bedpan, to keep the bathroom safe for the rest of the family. A dishpan of soapy water, placed on newspapers, would have to be left outside Jimmy’s door to receive soiled dishes, and a wash boiler to receive soiled linen.
“It isn’t as bad as it sounds,” Cherry encouraged. “But you must remember that everything that comes out of Jimmy’s room is a possible germ carrier. When it leaves the room it must be boiled or disinfected before it touches anything else.”
“I’m going to write all of this down,” the young mother said nervously. “I’ll just get pencil and paper from Jimmy’s schoolbooks—” She started to go into the sickroom, with the obvious intention of bringing the pencil and paper back into the living room. Cherry gasped and stopped her. Then she carefully explained all over again.
“Look here,” said Cherry. She saw a piece of the children’s chalk on the living-room floor. With it she drew a thick, white line outside Jimmy’s door. “This line will remind you.”
Mrs. Terrell smiled weakly. “It certainly will,” and she was calmer after that.
“Soap and water, lots and lots of it for everything, especially your hands, Mrs. Terrell,” Cherry instructed. “A tray for toilet articles. A tray for medicines. A clean smock to put on when you enter Jimmy’s room, and to leave on a hook beside his door, so you won’t carry out germs on your clothes. When you’re carrying anything out of his room, leave the smock on but—don’t touch anything! If you must touch, for dumping something, for instance, use squares of newspaper. Remember your hands are contaminated. Tie all garbage and waste in clean newspapers, and burn it. Now, is it all clear? Can you remember to do all this?”
Jimmy’s mother nodded, furiously scribbling down these instructions. Then, at Cherry’s request, she brought a covered pitcher of water, a glass, and a glass of fruit juice. They shooed the three toddlers away and went in to see Jimmy.
Poor Jimmy’s freckles scarcely showed under the rash. He woke up to stare at Cherry and say gratingly, “Sore throat.”
“Hello, Jimmy,” Cherry said. “Your mother and I are going to get you well quickly, you’ll see! Now here’s a pitcher of water, right where you can reach it. Doctor wants you to drink all the water you can, Jim. But wait, please, until I’ve taken your temperature.”
She counted the little boy’s temperature, pulse, and respiration, and wrote them down. She showed Mrs. Terrell how to keep Jimmy clean and comfortable in bed.
“I don’t feel very sick,” Jimmy said.
“No, you’re not very sick,” Cherry told him. “You won’t be, because your mother will follow instructions exactly. Better get some paper handkerchiefs, too, Mrs. Terrell; they can be burned. Then, when Jimmy is well again, you’ll clean everything—furniture, floor, curtains, shades, blankets, clothes—with soap and water. You’ll air his room for a couple of days. And you’ll take his mattress, and any clothes that can’t be washed, outdoors and give them a thorough sunning.”
“No fumigation?” Mrs. Terrell said in relief.
Cherry explained that soap and water, sun and air are the best disinfectants. She did sympathize with this overworked mother. Combating contagious disease was a great nuisance—or any disease, for that matter.
“It’s a lot simpler to stay well,” Cherry reflected as, at last, thoroughly scrubbed herself, she left the Terrell cottage. “Oh, yes, must remember to send a report to the Department of Health on this case.”
She stopped at the corner drugstore to catch her breath and phone back to the center. No, Bobbie said, there were no new calls for her.
“And a good thing! Today’s call list is long enough.”
She sat down at the counter for a quick coke. The sixteen-year-old soda fountain boy eyed her curiously as she sipped it.
“Excuse me, but aren’t you the new district nurse?”
Cherry smiled, admitted it, and told him her name.
“My name’s Joe Baxter. What do you think of our neighborhood?”
“I like it a lot. Lots of nice people living around here.”
Joe Baxter looked pleased. “Sure, lots of okay people in most neighborhoods, I guess. But our neighborhood has something special.”
“The view of the Manhattan skyline?”
“No. We have a mystery around here.”
“A mystery?” Cherry half smiled. “In this quiet neighborhood? You’re joking. You’re trying to play a trick on me, I’ll bet.”
“No, I’m not.” Joe Baxter looked at her soberly. “Say, haven’t you seen that mysterious old house?”
Cherry stiffened. “You mean the Gregory house? Yes.”
The boy leaned toward her on the counter. “Well, there’s a lady living in there but nobody ever sees her. It’s the craziest thing. Everybody says she’s a witch or something. I saw her, though, when I was a little shaver.”
“You saw her? You talked to her?” Cherry breathed.
Joe Baxter wiped the marble of the soda fountain.
“Yeah, years ago. Miss Gregory used to let us neighborhood kids play in her yard. She’d smile at us through the window. Sometimes she’d even talk to us, a little.” There was a faraway look in the boy’s eyes. “I guess she’d still let the children nowadays come. But for the last couple of years, they haven’t gone near her.”
“Why not?”
“Well, things began to change. In the last year or two, some of the kids”—Joe frowned—“said they saw strange goings-on at night. Shadows of witches dancing against the blinds, or something. It gave them the shivers.”
“Did you ever see them?” Cherry challenged.
“No’m. But all the kids say it’s so. Anyhow, their parents began telling them to stay away. So they stopped playing in her yard.”
Cherry listened to this with pity for Mary Gregory. The recluse must have needed the children around her, if she had encouraged them to come. Now even that small solace was lost to her. In the last year or two, Joe Baxter said. That was odd …
“In fact,” Joe said, his eyes round, “lots of mothers tell their children if they don’t behave, Mary Gregory will do something awful to them. The kids are plenty scared of her and that scary house. They say you really can see witches’ shadows. I’m not joking. There must be something spooky in there. They say it—well, it looks like a gallows.”
“Yes, a hangman’s gallows.”
Cherry was impressed but outraged all the same. Using that lonely creature as a bogeyman! She vowed to herself that she would find out more about it all.
“But not today. Heavens, what a list of calls I have. I mustn’t even think about Mary Gregory this afternoon. Have to get myself in a more cheerful frame of mind, too, so I can cheer up my patients.”
Nurse Ames had a lively afternoon. In a dimly lit apartment, she found tall, lean Boris Sergeyevsky and his very blonde wife, both coming down with influenza, both in long, black kimonos, gesturing with long cigarette holders and offering her tea with lemon, from their samovar. “Everybody wants to feed me,” Cherry chuckled to herself. Grateful, all these people wanted to give her something; having nothing else to give, they wanted to share their limited food with her.
Next came a visit to a Greek-American family in a kitchen strewn with confetti and wilting white roses. For two years they had saved to give their Phoebe a glorious wedding. Yesterday Phoebe was wed, there was a feast, and the entire family now had an acute stomachache. Cherry proffered congratulations and remedies. They gratefully pressed roses and Grecian wine on her—“more refreshments! I must look hungry”—but she wriggled out of accepting.
Cherry thought, though, what fun it would be to spread this wine, Mrs. Persson’s kondis and lingonberries, the Russians’ lemon tshay, Mama Jonas’s chicken broth and dumplings, and Mama Mediterraneo’s pasta all on one huge table, and invite them all to partake.
“Say, that really is a thought!” But she had to hurry along to many more calls.
The last case of the afternoon Cherry found the most appealing. She had treated Miss Culver only once before. The all-day rain had stopped and, though it was dusk now, a silver afterglow hung in the sky.
A slight woman opened the door to Cherry. Against the second-story windows that gleamed with the curious light she stood silhouetted.
“Come look here!” the woman said eagerly, after the briefest of greetings. She led Cherry to the windows, to look down at the shabby street. People, houses, cars were bathed in shadowy silver, like figures in a dream. “Just look!”
Cherry smiled at this imaginative woman. “Yes, it’s beautiful,” and she thought, “Not many people would see beauty on an everyday street. Especially one they have to look at every day.”
“It’s different every hour of the day,” Miss Culver said thoughtfully. “And from week to week, as the earth moves around the sun and the seasons change, my street changes into something new and different.”
Cherry looked at Miss Culver with sympathy. The daughter of an old family who had fallen on evil times, she had not bemoaned her fate but quietly had become a private secretary. She had devoted her life to taking care of her parents. Now that they were dead, she was alone. Recently her frail body had broken down, exhausted after years of work.
But nothing could quench her spirit. Living on a pittance, Cherry knew that Miss Culver limited herself to the most Spartan diet, so that she would have a few pennies left to put in the collection plate at church on Sundays. She was fighting to hold on to her standards. Her shabby one-room apartment might have been pitiful in another owner’s hands, but Miss Culver had made it a gracious home. A Duncan Phyfe antique sofa told of better days; its carefully mended upholstery mutely testified to her determination. Well-chosen books, borrowed without cost from the public library, lay on her table, beside a lovingly polished, old silver teapot. A chair and footstool were drawn up to the window, a tray-table held a few odd pieces of fragile china and a tiny radio—“so that I can have music and a view with my meals,” Miss Culver had explained.
Miss Culver herself was always dainty as a miniature and bore herself like a princess. Cherry respectfully regarded her as a triumphant soldier.
“Well, let’s see how you are today.” Cherry smiled. Miss Culver was convalescing from an attack of bronchitis. Her real trouble was need of a long rest.
“My throat is almost healed, thank you. But I still feel so weak and tired. However, I’m sure this is only temporary. I will get back my strength. I will return to my position again.”
“I know you will,” Cherry encouraged her. “Just don’t try it prematurely, Miss Culver. Be patient and rest.”
She wished Miss Culver could afford to go away on a vacation. Her only recreation was to take short walks. It must be lonely, sitting in this room without much to occupy her. Cherry recalled Mrs. Crump’s saying how it irked her to do nothing, and Uncle Gustave’s unhappiness at being idle. Miss Culver, too, needed something interesting and satisfying to do, while her strength slowly returned.
Out on the street, Cherry was thinking so hard about Miss Culver that she walked beyond the bus stop. And Uncle Gustave, too … she still had not solved his problem. Then Cherry realized where her feet were leading her: to a place she had intended for weeks to visit, but had always been too busy to get to—the settlement house.
“I really ought to get my people taken care of, before the Thanksgiving holiday,” she thought. Cherry was looking forward to Thanksgiving and some rest and fun.
Cherry approached the new, four-story, concrete building with interest. It was big, since it served an enormous area. Gwen had said it encompassed her nursing district too, and Bertha and Josie’s districts as well.
As Cherry went up the steps, crowds of children and young people streamed out, on their way home to supper. They were talking animatedly, making dates to meet here tomorrow. Cherry went into the entrance hall and found the receptionist.
“I’m Nurse Ames, visiting nurse for District Four. I’d like to talk with someone here about two of my patients.” Her uniform was her badge.
“Certainly, nurse. I’ll ask one of our social workers to see you.”
While the receptionist telephoned upstairs, Cherry looked in at one of the rooms. It was a studio, littered with colored dishes still wet from the pottery wheel, a half-finished portrait in clay, vases in the making. A woman in a smock was helping two young girls put away their tools. The clay and pigments smelled cool and pungent.
“Interesting?” laughed a voice at Cherry’s shoulder.
She turned to find a pleasant young woman in a pretty, red sports dress. “It certainly is interesting! Wish I had time to join that class. Is there a fee?”
“There is no fee for any activity in a community house. Everyone is welcome. We are supported by contributions. Oh, I might tell you my name, mightn’t I? I’m Evelyn Stanley and you’re Miss Ames, aren’t you? We’re always glad to have visitors, and especially the visiting nurses.”
“How do you do, Miss Stanley. I’ve been wanting for a long time to get here. I’ve never been through a settlement house.”
“Then I shall take you on a tour! The entire community is proud of Laurel House—”
Starting here on the semibasement floor, the social worker showed Cherry various rooms: the clay-working studio, the art studio with its easels and drawing boards and charcoal dust, a weaving room full of looms and bright yarns, a jewelry-making shop, a leather work-room, a sewing room with machines, a big metal and carpentry shop.
“This is our Craft School,” Miss Stanley said. “I think a community house would be welcome in any neighborhood, but it’s a necessity here where families can’t afford to give their children normal outlets. Without Laurel House, our boys and girls would be loafing on street corners and getting into trouble. Some of the so-called ‘bad ones’ have turned into our very best and most enthusiastic members.”
Beyond, on this street-level floor, Cherry saw a small auditorium with a generous stage, orchestra pit, and balconies.
“We give plays and concerts here, with neighborhood talent. We put on good shows, too! One of our girls is now a featured player in the movies, two of our boys now have their own dance bands, and—you’d better stop me, Miss Ames! We have a big gymnasium, besides, for sports and dances and parties. Always something going on.”
They went upstairs. Here they paused at pleasant sitting rooms for neighbors’ gatherings—“or for lectures and informal classes,” said Miss Stanley. “We have over two thousand adults coming here faithfully at night to improve their English, and study American history and civics. Many of them have been well educated in other languages.”
Up another flight, the social worker led Cherry into a room crowded helter-skelter with everything from dressers, tools, books, to egg beaters, overalls, and even a spinning wheel.
“This is our Swap Shop,” Evelyn Stanley explained. “If a family hasn’t the money to buy something they need or want, they can come here and trade in something they do have. Every article is priced by an impartial appraiser, but no money is exchanged.”
Cherry thought this an eminently practical and direct system. Her eye fell on a sewing basket which Bertha Larsen would certainly like to own.
“How would I buy that, Miss Stanley?”
“You’d have to bring in some article in exchange.”
“Suppose my article was valued at—oh, a dollar more than this sewing kit?”
“Then you’d get a dollar’s credit.”
On the third floor were still more cheerful rooms. “For group work and recreation, Miss Ames. Across the hall we run our Nursery School.” The social worker held open a door and Cherry saw playpens, shelves of toys, charts on the wall describing a child’s growth, diets, medical and dental care. “On the top floor is our Health Department. We’re hoping to open a Music School too, someday, if we can build around the corner.”
Cherry was impressed. Her civic consciousness was having a lively awakening. She thanked Evelyn Stanley for the tour.
As they went down the stairs again, Cherry talked to the social worker about Miss Culver and Gustave Persson, describing their problems.
“Indeed we can help them,” Miss Stanley said. “We’re obliged to you for letting us know of people who need help. For Mr. Persson, give him this—” She took from her pocket a card marked: Laurel House, wrote in Uncle Gustave’s name, and under it, Carpentry and Construction. This meant, she said, that he was invited to come here to the Craft Shop and build to his heart’s content with Laurel House tools and materials.
“Thank you! He’ll probably want to build you that new Music School,” Cherry laughed.
Miss Stanley’s eyes sparkled. “Maybe we’ll let him! Practically every person who comes here ends up giving Laurel House more than it gave him.”
“And about Miss Culver? She’s not well enough to walk this far and I think, too, that being among so many—well, noisy children would wear her out. She’s still convalescent.”
The social worker nodded. “We could send her something to do at home. Have you any idea what she’d enjoy?”
Cherry thought of those windows looking down on the street, and what Miss Culver had said about the silvery light. That mended upholstery too, like a fine piece of embroidery—Miss Culver’s hands must be as deft as her eyes were responsive. Then Cherry thought of the art room with its easels.
“What about paints and drawing paper, Miss Stanley? Maybe Miss Culver would like to try painting what she sees from her window. Or does she need instruction?”
“Some of the finest artists never had instruction. If your Miss Culver has a smidgeon of talent, it will come out by itself. If not—well, almost everyone enjoys messing around with colors.”
So it was arranged that Cherry would return in a few days and pick up paints, brushes, a big pad of water-color paper, folding easel—everything Miss Culver would need. She again thanked the social worker and left Laurel House.
On the sidewalk Cherry paused to shake her curly head at its hospitably open door. “There may not be a Santa Claus, but there certainly are some goodhearted, generous people in this world!”
It was night now, six-thirty—as usual, Cherry was hopelessly late in leaving her district. She ran for the bus. Hopping on, she was appalled to see that she would have to ride with that awful driver, Smith. Gingerly she handed him a dime and shrank back while he gave her change.
“Step back inna bus, back inna bus,” he growled at her.
Cherry stepped back, decidedly not wanting an argument. Just as the traffic lights started to change, a hurrying woman hopped on the bus step. It was Ingrid Persson. The driver all but slammed the door on her hand.
“In or out, lady—make up yer mind!”
Mrs. Persson was so startled that she could not move for a second. Then she fumbled for her fare.
“Ya made me miss the light! Now aintcha gonna pay yer fare?”
The whole bus was listening. Mrs. Persson flushed with humiliation. Her hands trembled as she futilely searched her purse. Cherry felt almost as badly as Mrs. Persson did. She was angry, besides, with the bullying driver. With a hello to Mrs. Persson, she put a nickel in the box for her, and hoped that would smooth the incident over.
But the driver sneered. Mrs. Persson looked about to cry. Cherry did something she would never have done had she not been in uniform and in her own district. She turned to the bus driver and said quietly:
“Now look, driver, that’s enough.”
He roared. “Smart nurse, huh? Mind yer own business!
“This neighborhood is my official business. Even you are my business.” Cherry did not raise her voice, but she knew it carried all over the bus. “Smith, what makes you so nasty that everybody hates you?”
“Let ’em hate me! Who cares?” But he did care. He had turned red.
“Don’t you know you’re making yourself a laughingstock?” That hit home, too. “Why don’t you try being—not pleasant—just silent, Driver Smith?”
Then Cherry turned away and sat down, shaking and surprised at this unaccustomed thing she had done. Mrs. Persson had taken a seat away out of sight in the back of the bus.
There was not another word out of the driver. Even when a fat lady puffed up the bus step and made him miss a green light, Driver Smith did not yell. He still glared, but his new-found silence was remarkable.
Cherry, with the rest of the inquisitive passengers, was so astonished that she rode along with her eyes glued on Driver Smith. Barely in time did she notice the bus stopping where she could distantly see the Gregory mansion.
Cherry pressed her face close to the window and peered down the shadowy blocks, straining to see the outlines of the house. A single, faint light glimmered there. Dark, bare trees rose in a protective thicket around the mansion and concealed an eighteen-year-old mystery.