Love stories; Nurses -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
It is doubtful if anybody but Sheila O'Leary could have managed such an
affair and left every one reasonably happy over it--two of them
unreasonably so. She accepted the wedding collation bestowed by the
wealthy old ladies of the sanitarium and passed it over to the boy and his
betrothed as if it had been as trivial a gift as an ice-cream cone. In a
like manner she passed on the trousseau, kissed all the nurses rapturously
for their work, and piled it all into Clarisse's arms with the remark that
it was lucky they were so nearly of a size. When she brought the
wedding-dress she kissed her, too, and said that she was going to make the
prettiest picture in it that the San or the soldier had seen in years. She
placated the management; she wheedled Miss Maxwell into a good humor; she
even coaxed Doctor Fuller into giving away the bride. Only Hennessy
refused to be propitiated.
"Are ye thinkin' of givin' Mr. Brooks away with everythin' else?" he
asked, scornfully; and then, his indignation rising to a white wrath, he
shouted, "I'll not put bows on the swans, an' I'll not come to any
second-hand weddin'."
But he did come, and held with Flanders the satin ribbons they had
promised to hold for Sheila. And the wedding became one of the greenest
of all the memories that had gone down on the San books.
As the sun clipped the far-away hills the boy was wheeled down the paths
to where the gold and white of early roses were massed in summer splendor.
Then came the girl with Sheila at her side; the girl had begged too hard
to be refused. But Sheila's face was as white as it had been the day they
operated on Doctor Dempsy, and only Peter guessed what it cost her to
stand with the bride. To Peter's care had been intrusted the little
mother, and he let her weep continually on his shoulder in between the
laughs he kept bringing to her lips.
And it all ended merrily. Sheila saw to that. But perhaps the thing that
gave her the keenest pleasure was wheedling out of Mr. Crotchets his
bungalow that stood on the slopes beyond the golf-links for a honeymoon.
"They'll have all the quiet they want and the care he still needs," she
told Peter when they were alone. "And nobody but the nurse in charge knows
about it--yet." Then seeing the great longing in Peter's eyes, she drew
him away from the crowd. "Listen, man of mine! I have the feeling that
when we are married there will be no wedding, just you and I and the
preacher. And in my heart I like it better that way."
"So do I," agreed Peter.
"I'm leaving--train to-night," Sheila hurried on. "No use putting it off;
better sail as soon as the passport's ready. There's just one thing more I
want to say before I leave you."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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