Nell Speed - Molly Brown's College Friends

“Don’t say jilting! It isn’t fair. Please be good to me! I am so miserable.”

The night nurse smiled in spite of herself and felt his pulse.

“There now! Just as I thought! You have worked yourself up into an abnormal pulse and I shall have to start a chart on you.”

“Abnormal nothing! How is a fellow’s pulse to remain normal when you put your dear little fingers on his wrist? But I forgot! I am not going to make love to you until I can let my Godmother know. Maybe she has met some grand English Tommy by this time – ” And then he groaned aloud and cried: “But I don’t want her to do that, either!”

“Blessed if I’m not in love with two girls,” he thought.

The night nurse sat quietly down to her charts after having gone the rounds of her ward. All was quiet. The convalescent soldiers were sleeping peacefully, dreaming of home, she hoped. Scott stirred restlessly now and then. He could not sleep but watched the busy little stained hand of the night nurse as it glided rapidly over the charts. She had no light but that of a guttering candle, carefully shaded from her patients’ eyes, but Scott could see her well-poised head and fine profile as she bent over her writing. How lovely she was! Would she ever listen to him? How she stood up for her sex, – and still she did not exactly repulse him. What a strange name for a girl like that to have! Grubb! It was preposterous. Indeed, he felt it his duty to make her change that name as soon as possible. Polly Nelson is a pretty name – dear little Godmother! Would she despise him, too, like this other girl? But did this other one despise him?

The night nurse made her rounds again and then left the ward for a moment. When she returned, she came to the American’s bedside.

“A letter has just come for you, Mr. Scott.”

“For me? Splendid! Will you read it to me?”

“Yes, if you cannot possibly see to do it yourself.”

“I might, but I’d rather not.”

“It is in the same rotten fist of those I read you to-night.”

“My Fairy Godmother! I – I – believe I can see to read that myself.”

She handed him the letter. Her hand was trembling a little and so was his. She brought the guttering candle and he opened his letter.

Somewhere in France.

My dear Godson:

I have always been so frank with you that I feel I must make a confession. I promised you in my last letter, the one I wrote just before I left home, that I would not fall in love with anyone until after the war, when you were to present yourself in Louisville and we were to view each other for the first time. Dear Godson – I have not kept my word. They say a man falls in love with his nurse often because of the feeling he has for his mother. She makes it seem as though he were a little child again. I reckon a nurse falls in love with her patient because he seems so like a little boy. She loves him first because of the maternal instinct. Be that as it may, I am in love with one of my patients. I tell you this fearing you may be wounded and you may fall in the hands of a cap and apron, and from a feeling of noblesse oblige you may not grasp the happiness within your reach.

God bless you, my dear Godson!

P. S. – He is an American.

A great tear rolled down the scarred cheek of the young soldier and splashed on the signature. Then something happened that made him sit up very straight in his cot and stretch out a shaking hand for the night nurse. She was by his side in a moment.

“Look! Look! The ink is not dry yet. See where that tear dropped! Dry ink would not float off like that!” He turned the sheet over. It was a chart.

“But you – you – little Fairy Godmother! Who is he?”

“There is only one American in my ward.”

“But you said your name was Grubb!”

“That’s my official name. Mary Grubb was the girl whose place I got with the Red Cross. Do you know, you hurt my feelings terribly when you said my fist was rotten?”

And Stephen Scott, holding the little stained and roughened hand in his, wondered that he ever could have made such a break.

“Thank God, you are just one girl, after all!” he cried.

But the night nurse wished that there were two of her for a while at least: one to stay by the bedside of the convalescent American and one to make out the charts that must be got ready for the morning rounds of the surgeon in charge.

“Ahem!” said Billie, rapping for order as the girls began all at once to say what they thought of “Fairy Godmothers Wanted.” The one with the burning plot began rattling her paper in preparation of the turn she hoped for.

“First general impressions are in order! One at a time, please! You, Miss Oldham, you tell us how it strikes you.”

“Pleasing on the whole, but – ”

“We’ll come to the ‘buts’ later,” was the stern mandate of the chairman of the day.

“You, Lilian Swift, you next!”

“Too long!” from the blunt Lilian.

“The idea! I think it was just sweet,” from the gentle Alabamian.

“I got kind of mixed in the middle and couldn’t tell which was the nurse and which Polly Nelson,” declared one who had evidently gone off into a cataleptic fit, no doubt dreaming of a story she meant to write some day.

“I never, never could love a man who had deceived me,” sighed the sentimental one with big eyes and a little mouth.

“Personal predilections not valuable as criticism,” said Billie sternly.

Many and various were the opinions expressed. Molly diligently and meekly took notes, agreeing heartily with the ones who thought it was too long.

“Where must I cut it?” she asked eagerly.

“Cut out all the letters!” suggested Lilian.

“How could she? It is all letters,” asked Billie, whose chair was becoming a burden as she felt she must get into the discussion.

“Cut ’em, anyhow. Letters in fiction are no good.”

“Humph! How about the early English novelists?” asked Molly.

“Dead! Dead! All of them dead!” stormed Lilian.

“Then how about Mary Roberts Rinehart and Booth Tarkington and lots of others? Daddy Longlegs is all letters.”

“All the samey, it is a poor stunt,” insisted the intrepid Lilian. “I call it a lazy way to get your idea over.”

“Perhaps you are right, but the point is: did I get my idea over?”

“We-ll, yes, – but they tell me editors don’t like letter form of fiction.”

“Certainly none of them have liked this,” sighed Molly, who had devoutly hoped her little story would sell. The money she made herself was very delightful to receive and more delightful to spend. A professor’s salary can as a rule stand a good deal of supplementing.

“How about the plot, now?” asked Billie, having finished with the general impression.

“Slight!”

“Strong!”

“Weak!”

“Impossible!”

“Plausible!”

“Original!”

“Bromidic!”

“Involved!” were the verdicts. The matter was thoroughly threshed out, Billie with difficulty keeping order. Nance was called on for the “but” that she had been left holding.

“The plot is slight but certainly original in its way. The letters are too long, longer than a Godmother would be apt to write, I think. The story could be cut to three thousand words, I believe, to its advantage.”

“I have already cut out about fifteen hundred words,” wailed Molly. “The first writing was lots longer.”

“Gee!” breathed the one eager for a hearing.

“Now for the characterization! Don’t all speak at once, but one at a time tell what you think of it.”

“Did you mean to make Polly so silly?” asked Lilian.