Cherry Ames 09 Cruise Nurse Read Online Free PDF Page A

wrist watch that Charlie had given her when she fi rst started on her career told her she still had an hour more before the stores closed.
    Cherry fi nally fi nished 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 fl ash 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.

    26 CHERRY
    AMES,
    CRUISE
    NURSE
    It took a long time to fi nd 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 fi nally 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 diffi cult. 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 slosh-ing 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?”

    “BON
    VOYAGE!”
    27
    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?”