Read Cherry Ames 21 Island Nurse Online
Authors: Helen Wells
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AMES,
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NURSE
“There!” Meg was saying and prodding Cherry. “Up there on the cliffs to the right is Barclay House. That’s where we’re going. It faces the ocean on one side and Balmaghie Bay on the other.”
Cherry looked up to the gray walls of the big house, with its square tower, balconies, and tall chimneys, like a castle, atop the cliff.
“How beautiful!” Cherry exclaimed. “Makes me think of gallant knights and fair ladies.” The
Sandy Fergus
drew alongside the wharf. In a moment, then, they were going ashore—Lloyd close to his uncle and Cherry and Meg behind. There was a little crowd of men, women, and children on the wharf.
There were cheers for Sir Ian. Some called out greetings to Meg and Lloyd. Youngsters waved. Everyone stared at Cherry attentively, interested as people in a small community always are in a stranger.
Two men detached themselves from the crowd—a lanky, sandy-haired young man with a pleasantly homely face; and a big, jovial, red-faced, red-haired man with prominent blue eyes. They shook hands with the Barclays, then Meg introduced them to Cherry. Dr. Douglas Mackenzie was the lanky one and Michael McGuire the big fellow, who, judging from his build, had probably played end on a college football team.
Cherry’s impression on seeing Dr. Mackenzie was one of surprise. From hearing Sir Ian and Dr. Joe talk about him (Dr. Joe had gotten his impression from the man’s voice over the phone), Cherry had imagined
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the doctor as a very young, very studious and earnest type of fellow with horn-rimmed glasses. Then, too, she had expected him to be quite reserved and formal.
But he was not in the least what she had imagined.
He was not very young. She thought he was between thirty and thirty-fi ve. His manner was easy and informal; his bony face was wonderfully kind; he wore no glasses and his large brown eyes were keenly observant.
“I like him,” Cherry thought. “I think we’ll get on together.”
Because he was Sir Ian’s physician, she would have to work under Dr. Mackenzie’s direction. If the doctor were a diffi cult person, her nursing job could be made quite trying. Cherry worked well with most people, even temperamental ones. But it was always easier to work with those who had agreeable personalities. She liked Dr. Mackenzie very much indeed on sight. And it was plain to be seen that he and Meg were very much in love. They could scarcely take their eyes off each other.
“Where’s Jock Cameron?” Sir Ian demanded all of a sudden.
“I saw him take his boat out early this morning,” piped up a man in the crowd. “He’s probably gone fi shing.”
“Gone fi shing?” Sir Ian cried in amazement. Turning to McGuire, he asked, “Wasn’t he in the offi ce this morning?”
“Oh, well, it’s Old Jock’s day off and he’s gone fi shing,” McGuire answered.
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AMES,
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“You’re a fi ne one to be asking for Jock Cameron, Sir Ian,” cried a thin, quavery voice, and a wisp of a man advanced slowly toward the mine owner. “Ye think a man’s got no pride? He dinna take it kindly that ye’ve seen fi t to make certain changes in operating the mines.
Bringing in a young sprout from Quebec to lord it over him.” The man glanced at McGuire with dislike.
Sir Ian glared down at the little old man. “Just what do you mean talking such stuff and nonsense, Tim Morgan?” he demanded angrily.
Dr. Mackenzie moved quickly and laid a gentle hand on Tim Morgan’s shoulder. “You must excuse Sir Ian now, Mr. Morgan,” the doctor said. “After he’s rested, I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.” Cherry stepped to Sir Ian’s side, and putting her hand on his elbow, propelled him fi rmly but gently toward the foot of the wharf where the chauffeur stood beside the open door of the Barclays’ not-very-new Rolls-Royce.
“Sir Ian has had an exhausting trip,” she said crisply to McGuire and those gathered around. “He must go home and get some rest at once.”
Dr. Mackenzie, Sir Ian, Cherry, Lloyd, and Meg walked to the car. The chauffeur started the motor.
They drove off up High Street that led from the waterfront, through the village, climbing up and up to Barclay House on the cliffs.
it was the middle of the afternoon when cherry fi nally went downstairs to lunch. Sir Ian was in an agi-tated state and refused point-blank to go to bed and rest. Dr. Mackenzie, or Dr. Mac as everyone called him on Balfour, was friendly but fi rm, shooed everyone away but Cherry, and got Sir Ian into bed. By that time Sir Ian was glad to go, for he had too much pain to stir about.
Dr. Mac gave him medication to relieve any acid condition in his stomach. Cherry gave him a feeding of milk and cream to which he reacted well.
Between little twitches of pain, Sir Ian complained and grumbled. He had come back, he said, to look after his mines and how was he going to do it if some young whippersnapper of a doctor and a mere lass of a nurse kept him in bed? Couldn’t they see that everything was at sixes and sevens on the island?
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AMES,
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Dr. Mac listened gravely, nodding in agreement to everything the mine owner said.
“Weel, why don’t you say something, Mackenzie?” Sir Ian burst out at last in exasperation.
The doctor grinned, his face wrinkling in amusement.
“Why, sir, you didn’t give me a chance,” he replied.
“Weel, then, why didn’t you stop me?” demanded Sir Ian irascibly. “No, you sat bobbing your head like a silly nuthatch pecking open a nut. And you, Cherry, what was the matter with you?”
“I agreed with Dr. Mac’s unvoiced opinion,” Cherry said primly. “It was better to let you get it off your chest.
Perhaps now you’ll settle down and get some rest.”
“Ye are a red-cheeked tyrant,” Sir Ian accused her.
“Ye wait. When I get well, I’ll show ye who’s boss.”
“Unless you quit upsetting yourself over things you can do nothing about,” said Dr. Mac, “you are going to lie there and be a milksop. Isn’t that correct, Miss Ames?”
“Absolutely, Doctor,” Cherry agreed with vigor.
“Ought never to get sick,” grumbled Sir Ian, turning his head aside and closing his eyes. “Lose your inde-pendence. Have to do as you’re bid.” Sir Ian pretended to sleep for a while. When the pain left, he began to doze. The trip had tired him.
“Call me at the hospital,” Dr. Mac told Cherry on leaving, “if you need me for anything. But I’ll be back later, anyway, to see how he is.”
Cherry sat alone with Sir Ian for a while longer, then Meg peeked in to say that she would relieve her.
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“You must have lunch, Cherry,” Meg told her. “Lloyd and I had ours ages ago, then he went down to the mines. I’ll stay with father. I had Higgins lay a place in the dining room and keep the chops warm. If you don’t like lamb chops, just tell Higgins and he’ll have Tess—
that’s the cook—fi x you something you do like.” Robert Higgins was the family’s butler.
“Thank you, Meg. A lamb chop will do nicely,” Cherry assured her. “I’ll not take long.”
Cherry left, going into her own room across the hall for a moment to freshen up. The family’s bedrooms and the guest rooms were all on the second fl oor. Cherry’s room was on the northeast corner of the house, overlooking the cliffs above a great cave, called Rogues’
Cave, in the cliffside.
From the east windows, Cherry had a magnifi cent view of the cliffs and the sea. On the north, the windows looked out over the island and onto the big hill where iron ore had fi rst been discovered on the island and the fi rst mine located well over a hundred years before. That mine had been worked out and abandoned long ago. The top of the hill where the entrance to the mine shaft had once been was grown over now with bushes and vines.
Cherry stood for a minute gazing at the scene, then walked down the long hall, down the curving staircase, to the center hall below, where portraits of generations of Barclays looked down upon her. Some were grim and stern, others smiled aloofl y. Meg resembled one of the ladies very much. The difference was in the dress 74
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which told Cherry that Meg would have had to be a hundred and fi fty years old to have posed for the artist.
“This way, Miss Ames,” Higgins said, suddenly appearing in front of her. The butler was old-fashioned and formal without being stiff. He had served the Barclays since Meg’s father was a young man. And his father and his grandfather before him had been butlers to the Barclays. Higgins led Cherry across the hall, past the west drawing room and into the dining room, fi lled with heavy mahogany and teak furniture.
As he was serving her lunch, she asked, “Higgins, why is the cave in the cliff below my windows called Rogues’ Cave?”
“I heard from my grandda that it was once a hideout for smugglers, Miss Ames,” he answered.
“Oh! What did they smuggle?”
“Brandy and whisky for traders who exchanged them with the Indians for furs,” Higgins said, shaking his head in disapproval.
“Does anyone ever go spelunking? I mean, does anybody go exploring the cave?” asked Cherry, helping herself to more of the chutney for the lamb.
“Not that I know of, Miss Ames,” he replied. “Not far inside anyway since Sir Ian, that is, the old Sir Ian—the present Sir Ian’s father and Miss Meg’s grandfather—
was a boy. My da said that the boy was lost for three days in Rogues’ Cave. Delirious when they found him on the beach, raving of gold and silver and crying ‘Open sesame!’ Of course, the boy’s head was fi lled with tales of adventure, for all he was a little scientist.”
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“A scientist?” Cherry asked.
“Ay. My da was fond of telling me how little Sir Ian used the room at the top of the tower for his experiments,” Higgins told her. “He was always crushing stones and melting things down in his little furnace. At the same time, he liked to imagine himself a Barbary pirate, a prince of Araby, an Indian chief, or whatever struck his fancy when he wasn’t mixing and boiling and cooking his chemical formulas.”
“He must have been a very unusual and imaginative boy,” Cherry commented.
“He was that, Miss Ames,” Higgins agreed. “Then he would sit up there in the tower”—he motioned in the general direction of the square, stone tower at the end of the house—“writing in what he called his ‘Secret Journal’ by candlelight at night.”
“It would be fascinating to see what he wrote,” Cherry said. “Perhaps Sir Ian might let me look at the journal.”
“No one but the boy ever laid eyes on it to anyone’s knowledge,” replied Higgins. “He kept it hidden away.
Then I dare say by the time he returned from school-ing in Scotland he had forgot all about it, for my da told me that the master of Barclay House never spoke of it more, once he took up the management of the mines.”
“So no one ever saw it,” said Cherry. “That’s too bad.”
“Ay. But the tower room is almost the same now as when the old Sir Ian was a boy,” the butler told her.
“The present Sir Ian never disturbed anything, for he 76
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was not interested in experiments. He was concerned only about operating the mines.”
Having fi nished her lunch, Cherry thanked Higgins for his interesting conversation and went upstairs.
Through the open door of Sir Ian’s room, Meg’s and her father’s voices fl oated down the hall. The acoustics were such that the hallway acted as an amplifi er and Cherry could hear more distinctly than if she were in the room with them.
“Da, dear, you mustn’t be cross with Aunt Phyllis,” Meg was saying. “I had the money, so I offered it to her. She’s terribly broke and in debt. It’s so frightfully expensive living in London and having the two boys off in school. She has a dreadful time; she just can’t make ends meet.”
“Never could. A sieve as far as money is concerned,” observed Sir Ian. “My sister Phyllis is the spoiled baby of the family. She’s been a widow long enough. Ought to get married again. Solve all her problems.” Meg laughed. “Suppose she picked a poor man, then you would be in the soup, wouldn’t you? You’d have to support her husband, too.”
Sir Ian grunted. “And that younger brother of mine, your uncle George. You saw him in London. He wanted me to give him another advance on his income, no doubt,” he said.
“Well, Da, the mines haven’t been paying a great deal for several years,” Meg pointed out. “Uncle George has always been used to living like a gentleman of wealth and now he hasn’t enough income to cover his
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expenses. He keeps falling behind a little more each year, just like Aunt Phyllis.”
Sir Ian grunted again. “Your uncle George might quit living like a gentleman of wealth—a playboy to put it more accurately—and go to work,” he remarked dryly.
“I don’t suppose you could let Aunt Phyllis and Uncle George have some money to tide them over, could you, Da?” Meg pleaded.
“Not a penny,” her father said with fi nality. “Haven’t got it to give. They’ll have to whistle for it somewhere else this time.”
Although Cherry could not help overhearing their conversation, she did not like to be eavesdropping on the Barclays’ family affairs. Money problems were always embarrassing to people. Sir Ian’s younger brother and sister, she gathered, expected to live in luxury in England on income from their shares in the Balfour Mines.
Apparently out of the present Barclay family, the only one who was really interested in the mines was Lloyd. Meg had told her that Lloyd’s father and mother had lived at Barclay House until their death in an earthquake when they were on a trip to the Pacifi c islands six years before. Lloyd’s father was next in age to Sir Ian, who was the eldest in the family. The two brothers had divided the operation of the mines between them. They had made a wonderful team, and his brother’s death had been a terrible blow to Sir Ian.