“How do you reckon we feel then?” drawled a little girl from Alabama, who only the week before had been torn limb from limb by the relentless “Would-be’s.”
“This is a story that I have sent on many a journey and it always comes back to its doting mother. I have received several personal letters about it – ”
“Oh, wonderful!” came from several members.
“Only think, the most encouraging thing that has happened to me yet was once a Western magazine kept my manuscript almost three weeks,” sighed a willowy maiden.
“Now please criticize it just as severely as you can. I want to sell it, and something must be done to it before the editors will take it,” begged Molly, getting over her ridiculous stage fright.
“Fire away!” said parliamentary Billie.
“How long is it?” asked Lilian Swift.
“About five thousand words, I think!”
“Whew!” blew the girl who hoped to get her plot in edgewise.
There was a general laugh and then Molly cleared her throat for action. “First, let me tell you I saw a clipping in the New York Times asking for Fairy Godmothers for the soldiers. That was what put the idea in my head. The title is: ‘Fairy Godmothers Wanted.’”
You could have heard a pin drop while Molly read, and occasionally one did hear the scratching of a pencil wielded by a member who was on a critical war-path.
CHAPTER IV
FAIRY GODMOTHERS WANTED
The ballroom was crowded but very quiet. The belle of the ball was the night nurse, deftly accomplishing the many duties that fall to the share of a night nurse. A letter must be written for a poor Gascon who had lost his right arm; a Bedouin chief must be watered every five minutes; a little red-headed Irishman begging for morphine to ease his pain, and a sad Cockney lad sobbing because he was “’omesick for ’Ammersmith,” must be comforted.
The beautiful old château had been converted into a hospital early in the war and the salle de bal was given over to the convalescents. The convalescent male is a very difficult proposition, and the little nurse sometimes felt her burden was greater than she could bear. There was so much to do for these sick soldiers besides nurse them. One thing, she must good-naturedly submit to being made love to in many different languages. She could stand all but the Bedouin chief.
“He seems so like our darkeys at home,” she had whispered to the one American who was getting well rather faster than he liked to admit.
This American wanted to get well and be back in the trenches, but who was to make love to the pretty night nurse in good old American when he left the convalescent ward?
“You promised to do something for me to-night. Don’t forget! You must be almost through with all of these fellows.”
“Ready in a minute!” She flitted down between the rows of cots, tucking in the covers here, plumping up a pillow there. The Bedouin was watered for the last time that night and finally closed his rolling black eyes.
“Now, what is it?” she asked, sinking down on a stool by the American’s bed, which was placed in an alcove at one end of the great salon. “If it is writing a letter, thank goodness, it won’t have to be in the second person singular in French. Why do you suppose they teach us such formal French at school? I can’t tutoyer for the life of me.”
“Same here! Je t’aime’s all I know. But I don’t want you to write a letter for me. I want you to read some. But first I must know your really truly name. I – I – like you too much just to have to call you nurse.”
“Mary Grubb!”
“No! Not really?”
“Yes! I’d like to know what is the matter with my name. It is a perfectly good name, I reckon.”
“Yes, Mary is beautiful – but – the other! Never mind, you can change it.”
“I have no desire to do so, at least not for many a day. I think Grubb is especially nice. It suggests Sally Lunn and batter bread.”
“There now, I would know you are from the South even if your dear little ‘reckons’ didn’t come popping out every now and then. Do you know, I have a friend who lives in Kentucky, and when the war is over I have been planning to go see her, but now – but now – I am afraid she won’t want to see me.”
“You mean the scars?” and she looked pityingly at the young man and put her firm little hand on his head. “Why, they will not amount to much. They will just make you look interesting. Your eyes will be well, I just know they will. Look at this long scar that has given the most trouble! It has turned to a pleasing pink and will be almost gone in a few months. You see you are so healthy.”
“It isn’t altogether the scars. If you think they are pretty, maybe she will, too. There is something else. I want to read over all this packet of letters before I decide something. You had better begin or that big, black, bounding beggar over there will begin to whine for water again. After you read the letters, maybe I will tell you the other reason why my friend in Kentucky might not want to see me.”
He took from under his pillow a packet of little blue letters, tightly tied with a piece of twine.
“Here they are! These letters have meant a lot to me while I was in the trenches. They still mean a lot to me. They were written by my Fairy Godmother.”
“Oh! Are they love letters?”
“No, indeed! I wouldn’t ask a woman to read another woman’s love letters. I wouldn’t let anyone but you read these letters, but my eyes are too punk to read them myself and I have to – to hear them to decide something, something very important.”
“All right! A nurse is a kind of father confessor and what one hears professionally is sacred.”
“But, my dear, I am not thinking of you as a nurse.”
“But I am thinking of you as a patient.”
She slipped the top letter from the packet and turned it over. “So your name is Stephen Scott!”
“Didn’t you know my name, either? How funny!”
“I only know the names of the patients who have charts, and you are too well to waste a chart on. We nurses call you the convalescent American. Sure these are not love letters?”
“Of course!” impatiently. “But if you don’t want to read them to me, just say so. Maybe you are tired. Of course you are. You look pale and your little hand is trembling.”
“No, no! I am not tired! Let me begin.”
The salle de bal of the old château was very quiet. The wounded soldiers were dropping off to sleep one by one. Even the Bedouin chief had stopped rolling his eyes and was softly snoring. In a low clear voice she read the letters.
My dear Godson:
It is so wonderful to be a Godmother that I can hardly contain myself for joy. It is through an advertisement I saw in a New York paper, headed Fairy Godmothers Wanted, that I happen to have you and you happen to have me. I consider our introduction quite regular as it came through the wife of a great general.
I wonder how you like belonging to me? I wonder if you are as alone in the world and homeless as I am. I wonder if you are big or little, dark or fair, old or young. I wonder all kinds of things about you, – after all, it makes no difference, any of these things. You are my Godson and every day I am going to pray for you and think about you. I am going to send you presents and write you long letters and send you newspapers. The only trouble about it is by the time I get hold of English papers they will be weeks and weeks old. I wonder if American magazines and papers would appeal to you. I wonder what kind of presents you would like, – not beaded antimacassars and not mouchoir cases surely. I will knit you a sweater maybe, but I am not very fond of knitting.
This