Cherry Ames 09 Cruise Nurse Read Online Free

the pirate-infested Caribbean.
    He brought in Captain Kidd, Drake, and Morgan, and ended with Cherry walking the plank by order of Long John Silver.
    What seemed like minutes later, Cherry was tensely trying to go to sleep in an upper berth of a streamliner speeding to New York. The night was endless, but the next day passed all too quickly.
    She had hardly made out her Christmas shopping list and gathered her scattered thoughts when she found herself in the dim hallway of the Greenwich Village apartment house. Good old No. 9! Tacked in a row beside the doorbell were the Spencer Club’s professional cards: Gwen’s, Vivi’s, Bertha’s, Josie’s, Mai Lee’s and, last but not least, a faintly dusty one on which were engraved the words:
    CHERRY AMES, R.N.
    Cherry was tempted. None of them would be home until after six. It was hardly fi ve-thirty now. None of them had had the faintest hint of her new job. Why not give them the surprise of their young lives?
    She set down her suitcase and scrabbled through her wallet for a fresh card. Under her name she carefully added in bold, block printing, “Ship’s Nurse.” Giggling, she substituted the new card for the old one.
    That would give them a jolt. Gwen’s eyes would bug right out of her head.
    Cherry unlocked the blue door and slipped into the ground-fl oor apartment. The living room with the 18 CHERRY
    AMES,
    CRUISE
    NURSE
    gold-and-white sprigged wallpaper looked just the same: Tidy, but not too tidy, with a pleasant, lived-in look. There were ashes under a huge, half-burnt log in the handsome fi replace. Books and magazines over-fl owed from the low shelves under the windows facing the street. The gold gauze curtains they had all helped make had a freshly laundered crispness.
    “I’ll bet Bertha did that.” Cherry smiled to herself and went down the hall to the bedroom she shared with Gwen. Slowly she unpacked the few things she would need before sailing.
    It seemed strange to be the only one home. And it seemed much stranger not to be tired and harried at the end of a working day. Luxuriating in the peace and quiet of the normally hectic apartment, she donned a warm fl annel housecoat and bunny-toed scuffs. It was so cold she could see her breath. That janitor! He insisted too much heat was unhealthy.
    In the tiny kitchenette Cherry fi xed herself a cup of scalding tea and two thick slices of cinnamon toast.
    Munching between sips she wandered into the back parlor. She laughed as the sight of the blue furniture reminded her of that scrape. Another “Ames Folly,” that one. The janitor had been furious when he discovered that the girls, at Cherry’s suggestion, had painted the dingy chairs, table, and sideboard without his permission. But it had all ended happily.
    Cherry heard the rattle of a key in the front door lock. Quickly she dumped her cup and saucer in the sink and hurried down the hall. It was red-haired Gwen

    “BON
    VOYAGE!”
    19
    with a smudge of subway soot on the end of her pert, freckled nose.
    “Cherry Ames!”
    “Gwenthyan Jones!”
    Sturdy arms hugged Cherry tightly. “We got your wire, but we didn’t believe a word of it. What gives?
    Why come back with Christmas less than a week away?”
    “Oh, dear,” Cherry moaned inwardly. “She didn’t even notice my new card. What a fi ne jolt that turned out to be.”
    She opened her mouth to explain and then Bertha arrived, laden down with bundles of groceries. After that, Mai Lee showed up with Vivian right on her heels. Everybody talked at once, bombarding Cherry with questions. There was such a babel of voices that Cherry’s replies were drowned out. And suddenly there was Josie, blinking bewilderedly behind her glasses.
    “Cherry,” she blurted in her rabbity way. She was holding Cherry’s new card in one gloved hand. “What’s this about you being a ship’s nurse? Are you going to give up your district?”
    “Ship’s nurse,” the others shouted in unison. “Who’s a ship’s