Cherry Ames 21 Island Nurse (4 page)
Read Cherry Ames 21 Island Nurse Online
Authors: Helen Wells
“Thank you, Jerry. I’ll tell him,” Lloyd said, and getting up followed the other to the door.
“Good-bye, Miss Ames,” called Jerry, and the next moment he was gone.
Cherry felt embarrassed at having witnessed the scene between the two, in spite of the fact that as a nurse she was certainly exposed to many intimate family affairs. Lloyd Barclay would probably feel that she was in the way, so . . .
“Please excuse me, Mr. Barclay,” she said. “It’s time for your uncle’s feeding.” And she hurried out of the room.
Dr. Fortune was pulling the sheet up, after having examined Sir Ian once again. “You’re coming along.
You say no pain to speak of, that’s good,” Dr. Joe was
SIR IAN BARCLAY
27
remarking. “We’ll take some X rays, and then we’ll see what we’ll see. I’ve been in touch, as you know, with your Dr. Douglas Mackenzie on the island and he’s given me a summary of your case. Sounds like a fi ne young physician. Ulcer of the duodenum, that fi rst inch of bowel next to the outlet of the stomach, he told me.
A small crater there, no perforation.” The doctor looked around to Cherry. “Ah, there you are, Miss Ames. I was on the point of calling you.” Nodding toward Sir Ian, he went on, “The patient wondered if you’d mind very much writing a letter and mailing it for him.”
“Why, of course not,” Cherry said cheerfully. “I’ll just prepare Sir Ian’s four-o’clock feeding . . .” She caught the glint in the mine owner’s eye and stopped. “Correction, milk with cream in it. Sir Ian fi nds the word
‘feeding’ distasteful,” she told Dr. Joe.
“Call it nectar and ambrosia, Miss Ames, if that will help,” suggested the doctor solemnly.
“Even nectar and ambrosia become a bit monoto-nous,” declared Sir Ian, “if given at intervals of every two hours. What name did you give this treatment, Doctor? Oh, yes, I recall—Sippy. And it is quite aptly named, if I may say so.”
Dr. Joe laughed. “It happens, Sir Ian, that that was the name of the doctor who devised the treatment of peptic ulcer—Dr. Bertram Sippy of Chicago.”
“I refuse to believe it,” said Sir Ian. “It is too pat altogether.”
Cherry had prepared the mixture of equal parts of milk and cream for the feedings throughout the day 28
CHERRY
AMES,
ISLAND
NURSE
and had stored them in the suite’s refrigerator. She had only to pour out the correct amount in a glass and hand it to Sir Ian with a glass tube to suck through.
Dr. Joe picked up his bag. “I’ll look in on you in the morning,” he told Sir Ian. “The last test showed the acid in your stomach is being kept down at night, so I won’t come poking and dosing. You can get an unin-terrupted night’s sleep.”
Both Cherry and Sir Ian watched the doctor’s slight fi gure move with quick boyish steps across the room and out the door.
“There is a
doctor
!” announced Sir Ian.
“And a fi ne man,” Cherry added. She went over to the writing table in the bedroom and sat down. Getting out note paper and an envelope from the drawer, and her pen from her pocket, she said, “I’m ready for that letter now.”
Sir Ian sucked noisily for a moment, then dictated:
“Dear Jock: Here I am in hospital. You’ll see the name and address at the top of the page. Attack of ulcers. Nothing to worry about. You know I’ve had upsets before this. I am writing to let you know that I have decided not to continue the tour of mines in the United States and Mexico. As soon as I am well enough to travel, I am returning to Balfour.
“No doubt Mike McGuire has told you I talked with him when I called the Mine Offi ce. Now, I am not blaming you, Jock, for what happened in Number two mine. Don’t think for a moment that I am. But with the reopening of Number two and the opening of the new
SIR IAN BARCLAY
29
mine, as soon as the preliminary work is done, anything is liable to happen. I should not have let James Broderick persuade me against my better judgment to take the tour at this time.
“I did discover some important new developments in operation during visits to two mines here in the States, so the time has not all been wasted.” There was a pause, then Sir Ian continued, “Here’s the name and address where you send it: Mr. Jock Cameron, Piper’s Cove, Balfour Island, Newfoundland, Canada.”
Cherry addressed the envelope and held the letter while Sir Ian signed it with a fl ourish.
“Thank you, Nurse. You’ll fi nd some airmail stamps on the desk, I believe,” he said.
She found them, licked one, and placed it on the letter.
“Now, I suppose you’re going off duty,” Sir Ian complained pettishly. “It’s past four by your watch, I see.
And you’re going to leave me to the tender mercies of that starched tyrant.”
“Mrs. Hendrickson is very capable and kind,” Cherry defended the nurse on duty from four p.m. to twelve midnight.
At that moment Mrs. Hendrickson came in, big and bustling and effi cient, and took over.
“See you at eight sharp in the morning, Sir Ian,” Cherry called out from the doorway.
“Don’t forget to mail my letter.”
“I won’t,” she promised.
30
CHERRY
AMES,
ISLAND
NURSE
On going into the sitting room, she was surprised to see Lloyd Barclay still there.
“Why, Mr. Barclay, I thought . . .” she began.
“Thought I’d gone?” he asked. “No, I waited to ask you if you’d stop and have an ice-cream soda with me.
The doctor passed through a bit ago and he asked me if I was waiting to see my uncle. It was too bad, he said, but no more visitors were allowed. ‘Who wants to see the auld rascal?’ I asked. ‘I am waiting to see that bonnie lass of a nurse, Miss Ames. I am going to ask her . . .’ ”
Cherry shook her head sadly and then crinkled her eyes at him. “. . . her to have an ice-cream soda,” she fi nished for him.
“And what did the doctor say?” demanded Lloyd, and answered himself in the next breath. “He said it was a brilliant plan.”
“You, Mr. Barclay,” Cherry accused him, “are simply a younger Barclay than the one in there,” pointing to the other room. “You look like him, talk almost like him, and you are a wheedler, and I suspect a bully just like him.”
Lloyd Barclay’s dark-gray eyes regarded her sadly. “I dinna haud with compliments and ye canna take ma mind off its purpose with fancy words,” he said righteously. “How about that soda?”
“I accept with pleasure, Mr. Barclay,” she said in her most ladylike tones.
cherry felt pleasant and at ease with the world when she went to her locker to get her handbag and powder her nose, after telling Lloyd Barclay to meet her in the visitors’ lounge.
She had reason to be happy. Her patient was mend-ing. And didn’t she have a date with a man most of the girls would have given their eye teeth to go out with in spite of their feeling that he was “snobbish.” Lloyd saw her in the doorway of the lounge, got up quickly, and came forward. He observed Cherry admiringly, then said shyly, “I’m surely a lucky fellow to be taking out such a pretty girl.”
“Thank you, Sir,” she told him demurely.
They went outside. “I’m depending on you to lead us to the best soda in town,” he warned as they started down the walk.
31
32
CHERRY
AMES,
ISLAND
NURSE
“If you’re like my twin brother Charlie, it’s the place where they give you the two biggest scoops of ice cream,” she informed him.
“Any brother of yours is bound to have the right idea,” he assured her.
He wanted to know about Charlie, so Cherry launched into an enthusiastic account of her brother’s work. At the corner, she stopped to drop Sir Ian’s letter in the mailbox and went on talking. “Charlie was always, even as a kid, interested in aeronautics,” she told Lloyd. She giggled suddenly. “You should have seen that room of his! It was piled to the ceiling with models of planes.” Walking down the street, from almost everyone they passed, it was “Hi, Cherry!” or “Hello, Miss Ames!” and an interested glance at the handsome stranger at Cherry’s side.
“People in this town all seem to know you,” remarked Lloyd.
“I’ve lived here all my life and my parents before me, so I suppose the Ames family could be called old-timers. That accounts for it,” explained Cherry.
“That’s the way with us on the island,” he said. “Everyone knows the Barclays. Most of us on the island are what you call old-timers. Our families came there in 1750 and a good many have clung to the rocky place like lichens ever since. In fact, until my uncle’s generation, none of the Barclays left the island except to go to school in Scotland or for travel in Europe to round out their education. But I rather spoiled the tradition
LLOYD
33
by going to the Colorado School of Mines and working in the States.”
Hilton’s favorite ice-cream parlor was charming and old-fashioned. Cherry and Lloyd sat talking over their strawberry ice-cream (two huge scoops) sodas.
It was Lloyd really who did the most talking and Cherry listened. He seemed to feel the need to talk to someone.
As he said, “In the past week my uncle and I have become better acquainted with you than people we’ve known for years. We’ve come to think of you as not only a nurse, but as a friend, too. It may seem strange to you, but Uncle Ian and I are shy. It’s often hard for us to make friends. He covers up his shyness by being stiff and arrogant, while I give the impression of being sort of a cold fi sh. At least, that is what the fellows told me at the Colorado School of Mines until they really got to know me.” He paused, then continued,
“But with you, Cherry—I hope you don’t mind my calling you Cherry, and you call me Lloyd—with you it’s different, somehow.”
For a time, he went on talking of the island, the various families, his student days at the mining school.
Suddenly, Cherry, who busied herself with her soda, caught a more serious tone in his voice. She sensed that he was leading up to a confi dence of some sort.
“Cherry,” he began at last, “I suppose you’re wonder-ing about Mr. Broderick, Jerry Ives, the plane, and all the rest.”
34
CHERRY
AMES,
ISLAND
NURSE
“It isn’t any of my business, Lloyd,” Cherry pointed out gently and smiled. “But, frankly, now that you yourself brought it up, I
am
curious.”
“I was hoping you would be,” he returned with a grin.
“Especially since I hope that we can be good friends.”
“Carry on then, Friend Lloyd,” Cherry encouraged him, keeping her tone light so that he would not feel shy or embarrassed.
“Let’s begin, then, with Mr. James Broderick,” said Lloyd. “He is a man of wide interests in shipping, con-struction, plastics, mines, mining machinery, and equipment. Now, Uncle Ian had to have all new machinery and equipment to start work on and then operate the new mine, the Number 10 you’ve heard us speak of.
“Uncle Ian went to James Broderick and arranged to purchase what he needed for the mine through companies that Broderick controlled. Uncle Ian had to borrow a very great deal of money to do this.” Cherry shook her head. “Oh, dear, to owe money worries everyone. Of course Sir Ian is worried.”
“Don’t look so sad,” Lloyd told her. “To borrow money in business and industry, Cherry, is an everyday matter.
It isn’t the borrowing of itself that makes a business safe or unsafe. It’s how
much
can be borrowed with safety by a particular company.
“Balfour Mines is a family-owned company. Uncle Ian, my cousin Meg, Aunt Phyllis and Uncle George in England, and I—we own the mines. There are few such companies that have survived. And for a very good reason. It takes too much money to run them
LLOYD
35
and compete with enormous industrial and business concerns—the giants. You know yourself, Cherry, that the small grocery store fi nds it hard to compete with chain stores and supermarkets.
“It’s the same with the Barclay-owned iron mines.
We are little compared with the modern giants. When Uncle got the money for the new Number 10 mine, he had to borrow
more
than was safe for our family-owned mines. He stretched his credit too far. He has been able so far to make payments on the loans. But he hasn’t been able to meet the full payments regularly.
And Broderick would leap at the chance to gobble up Balfour Mines. I gathered all this from the few bits of information that Uncle Ian let drop when we were visiting the mines.”
Cherry frowned, trying to understand how it all fi tted together.
“You seem puzzled,” Lloyd said.
“I am,” Cherry replied. “I don’t understand Mr. James Broderick. He’s a hardheaded businessman, ready to gobble up the Barclay mines one moment, and the next, he’s sending you and your uncle on a mining tour in his private plane with his personal pilot, Jerry Ives.” Lloyd burst into a hearty laugh. Cherry’s face must have changed its expression to a wounded one, for he apologized, “Cherry lass, don’t look so hurt. It’s just that James Broderick is so easy to understand. He’s simply interested in taking over companies that are not going as well as they should and making them operate effi -
ciently and profi tably. In the process, Mr. Broderick 36
CHERRY
AMES,
ISLAND
NURSE
becomes tremendously wealthy and powerful. He advanced money for machinery and equipment for Balfour Mines, so he’s interested in seeing that the mines are operating at top level if he ever has to take them over. If observing modern effi ciency methods in other mines would help Uncle and me to do this, Mr. Broderick was going to see that we got to visit the most modern mines.”
“Well, then,” argued Cherry, “isn’t Mr. Broderick taking a big chance? If you operate the mines very profi tably, the loans will be paid off and Mr. Broderick can’t gobble up the mines.”
“But that’s a chance he’s willing to take,” Lloyd said.
“You see, either way he doesn’t
really
lose. As for the Barclays, they have just about everything to lose if the loans can’t be paid off.”
