Heart of Gold Part 30

"Why--er--I think she is going to take care of the doctor after this,"

laughed Gail, a conscious blush flooding her pretty face.

"What doctor?"

"Dr. Race."

"Is _he_ sick?"

"No. O, no. But Miss Wayne is soon to become his wife, my dear."

"His wife! Mercy sakes! Ain't that just my luck? O, dear!" wailed the small sister in distress.

"Why, what in the world is the matter?" cried Gail in great surprise. "I am sure that is a delightful sequel to a beautiful romance. Dr. Race is such a good man as well as a wonderfully successful physician, and Miss Wayne will make an ideal wife for him. Think how happy they will be in a little home of their very own."

"That may all be so," Peace reluctantly admitted, "but what am I going to do now for a pattern? She was an old maid--she said so herself--and I'd made up my mind to be just like her; and here she's going to be married after all. That's the way it happens every time with me. I thought Miss Swift wanted Dr. Race for a husband. The nurses used to joke about it all the time, and if Miss Wayne was going to get married at all, I don't see why she didn't pick out Dr. d.i.c.k. I like him best of all. O, I forgot to tell you,--he broke his leg last night."

"Who?" Gail flew out of her chair like a ball from a cannon's mouth.

"Dr. d.i.c.k."

"Peace Greenfield, what do you mean?" shrieked the older girl, seizing the small sister by the shoulder with a grip that hurt.

"Ouch! Leggo! Don't you ever pinch me like that again! His automobile ran into a telegraph pole when he tried to turn out so's he wouldn't hit a baby playing in the street, and he fell out and broke his leg. It's a wonder that he wasn't hurt _eternally_. They brought him here and Dr.

Kruger set it. My, but he's ugly! I've been in to see him already this morning. I just _had_ to get even with him for the trick he played on me when I first came here, so I told him that when he wanted to walk to remember he would find four legs under his bed. But he never thought it a bit funny. Doctors and nurses do make the meanest patients when they are sick of anyone I know," concluded Peace sagely.

Gail had stood like one petrified as Peace chattered volubly on, but now she found her voice and excitedly interrupted, "But d.i.c.k--Dr.

Shumway--where is he now? Why didn't anyone tell me before?"

"He's in Room 10, down the hall,--though I don't see why _you_ should be told any sooner than--"

But Gail had vanished; and Peace, after one long, amazed look after the fleeing form, grabbed her crutches and started in pursuit, muttering as she hobbled along, "_I'm_ going to see what's the matter."

At the threshold of the doctor's room, however, she paused, transfixed at the sight of Gail bending over the prostrate figure on the narrow bed, kissing--yes, actually kissing--a pair of mustached lips.

"Mercy!" she gasped, backing out precipitately.

But the lovers neither heard nor heeded.

"I thought you would _never_ come!" the doctor was saying fervently, while he held Gail fast in his arms. "Kruger promised that he would 'phone you last night."

"I never knew a word about it until Peace told me a minute ago," Gail protested.

"What would we do without our Peace?" he murmured. Then discovering the shocked face in the doorway, he exclaimed, "Why, here she is herself!

h.e.l.lo, chicken!"

"You--you kissed her," Peace exploded. "_I saw you!_"

"Yes," he answered brazenly, "and I am going to do it again."

"Are you--have you gone and got married,--you two?"

"Not yet," he laughed boyishly. "But we are going to do just that very thing as soon as I can coax her to set the day. You don't mean to say that you object?"

"No--O, no. If she's got to have a husband, I don't know of a better one than you, except St. John, and he is already married once.

But--I--am--surprised! Isn't she--er--rather young?"

And she could not understand why they laughed.

CHAPTER XVII

A HOSPITAL WEDDING

Peace, with writing pad and pencil in hand, climbed laboriously up into the deep window recess overlooking the wide lawns of Danbury Hospital, and propped her crutches against the sash, so that by no chance they could fall to the floor out of her reach while she was composing her weekly letter to St. Elspeth.

"I've got _so_ much to write her," she sighed, chewing her pencil abstractedly. "I wish I could work a typewriter. 'Twould be so much easier to 'tend to all my letters then. It's tiresome writing things by hand. If it wasn't Elspeth, I wouldn't try today. It's so lovely and cool just to sit here and watch folks pa.s.s along the street. I 'most wish now that I had gone with Gail and Dr. d.i.c.k in their auto.--There, that's the first thing I must tell Elspeth. She'll be awful glad to know Gail is going to have such a nice husband. And the ring he gave her is too pretty for anything. Everyone has diamonds for their 'gagement rings, but it takes someone with brains to think up a ring out of sapphires and topazes, 'cause his birthday is in September and hers in November. When I get married, that's the kind of a ring I want, only I hope my husband's birthday stone is a ruby, 'cause I like them best of all."

Peace paused in her soliloquy long enough to write the date at the top of the page; then again thrust the pencil point into her mouth as she gazed reflectively out of the open window.

"Well," said a voice with startling abruptness almost at her elbow, "I shouldn't want to be in her shoes. No matter which place she chooses someone is going to feel hurt."

"That's what she gets for being so popular," laughed another voice, which Peace recognized as that of Miss Keith.

"You should say 'they,' instead of 'she,' for Dr. Race is as popular as Miss Wayne," interposed a third speaker; and the pair of startled brown eyes peering around the corner of the window seat beheld a quartette of white-capped nurses seated at a long table in the hallway, busy with heaps of snowy cotton and great squares of surgeon's gauze.

"I wonder what Miss Wayne has done now?" thought Peace, when, as if in echo of her thoughts, the fourth member of the little group asked hesitatingly, "What is all the fuss about? You see, I am so new here that I don't understand."

"Well, Miss Kellogg, neither do some of us older ones," retorted Miss Swift with an unpleasant laugh. "It seems to me that it is 'much ado about nothing.' Whose business is it if a doctor and a nurse decide to get married? Why don't they go to the justice of the peace or some parsonage and have it over with, instead of making such a stew--"

"You see, Miss Kellogg," interrupted Miss Keith mischievously, "our friend Swift had her eye on the doctor--"

"Now, girls," suggested the quiet voice of the first speaker, gentle Miss Gerald, "don't enter into personalities, please. They always breed ill feeling. You have met Helen Wayne, have you not, Miss Kellogg?"

"Yes, indeed. I think she is lovely."

"So does Dr. Race and all the rest of us," put in Miss Keith, unable to resist another wicked glance at her neighbor.

"Well, they are to be married very soon, and neither of them has any relatives living here in Fairview, so--"

"All their friends began to interfere," said Miss Swift.

"O!" But Miss Kellogg still looked mystified.

"Now don't pretend that it was as bad as all that," protested Miss Gerald. "It seems that Dr. Shumway was a cla.s.smate of Dr. Race, and they have always been great friends; so Mrs. Wood, Dr. Shumway's sister, asked them to be married at her house. But Dr. Kruger's wife and Helen graduated from the same school, and the Krugers urged them to have the ceremony performed at their place."

"And then Dr. Canfield bobs up with the a.s.surance that he will feel most dreadfully hurt if they don't honor him by coming there," interrupted Miss Keith. "Miss Wayne nursed her first case under him, and he thinks her popularity is due solely to the recommendation he gave her,--the dear old fogy!"