Cherry Ames 02 Senior Nurse Read Online Free PDF Page A

want to, and if the rest of our class wants to——”
    “They’ll want to!” Bertha Larsen cried. “I’ll ask them right now!”
    She and Ann and Vivian and Marie promptly got up and circulated around the dining room. A loud buzz of 28
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    talk arose. Cherry waited. Five minutes later they returned.
    “They want to!” Bertha announced. “The seniors are dying to adopt the probies!”
    Mai Lee rapped gently on the table for order. “I propose that Cherry apply to the Superintendent of Nurses for permission.”
    Cherry groaned. The others all assured her hastily that they would be standing outside Miss Reamer’s office, lending moral support, if she felt too weak.
    “All right,” said Cherry, scrambling to her feet. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you!” She turned the corner out of the nurses’ dining room, went through Spencer’s vast rotunda, and turned another corner to the Superintendent’s office. She raised her hand to knock on Miss Reamer’s door and paused. She felt worried, astonished, topsy-turvy, and hilarious.
    “I still don’t know what being a senior is,” she thought,
    “but I never expected it to include rabbits and a pint-size gypsy and that extraordinary young doctor and—
    and now, adopting people!”

    c h a p t e r i i i
    Two Strange People
    a week later an announcement appeared on the nurses’ bulletin board. The Superintendent of Nurses herewith granted permission to the seniors to “adopt” the entering class of probationers. Miss Reamer invited all seniors and probationers to a tea in Spencer lounge that afternoon between three and four.
    “The old darling, giving us a tea party,” Cherry said to Ann. They tucked in their small patients in the Children’s Ward and rushed back to Crowley to change.
    Cherry arrived at Miss Reamer’s tea, breathless and flushed, in a saucily starched uniform. The big lounge in Spencer was overflowing with seniors, trying to look kind and reassuring, and beside them were young probationers in their gray dresses, painfully shy.
    Cherry made her way through the stiff little groups 29

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    with their tea cups, stealing glances at Gwen and Ann and Vivian and Marie Swift, each with her probie in tow. It was hard to tell anything from their polite faces.
    Only Ann seemed really at ease and warmly friendly.
    Well, most things were difficult at the beginning, Cherry thought.
    She went up to the long flower-strewn tea table, where at one end Miss Reamer sat behind a decorative samovar, dispensing tea and cakes. At the other end of the table, the flinty-faced Assistant Superintendent of Nurses, Miss Kent, poured, looking as if she would be a good deal happier in an Operating Room.
    “Good afternoon, Miss Reamer,” Cherry said, with genuine pleasure at seeing the older woman. “Have you a probationer for me?” In order to be perfectly impartial, Miss Reamer had acted as agent between the two classes, picking names of seniors and probies out of a hat. Cherry was anxious to know whom she herself had drawn.
    “Hello, Miss Ames. Yes, your probationer’s name is Mildred Burnham. She isn’t here yet.” Cherry accepted the cup which Miss Reamer held out to her. “I don’t understand why not. All the probationers were dismissed in plenty of time for the tea.” Cherry felt a quick misgiving. Cherry was, conspicuously, the only unattached senior in the room. She T W O S T R A N G E P E O P L E

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    waited around, pretending to serve cake, and finally went to sit down with Vivian and Gwen. Two girls in gray were with them. They were so frozen with respect for seniors that they could not say much beyond “Yes” and “No” and “Thank you.” But they were clearly eager for the sympathetic help which Vivian and Gwen offered.
    “They’re sweet,” Cherry thought as Gwen introduced the probationers. “I hope mine measures up to these two.”
    “We were just