Cruise to a Wedding. Бетти Нилс

dramatically and with faint pettishness, ‘Loveday—I thought you would never come! I have waited and waited. I am in the greatest trouble.’

      Loveday saw that the tea kettle would have to wait. She started to take off her uniform instead; Rimada was her greatest friend and she liked her enormously, even while she was sometimes impatient of her inability to accept life as it came. Possibly this was because the Dutch girl was an only child, hopelessly spoilt by a doting mother and used to having her own way. When Loveday had first become friendly with her, she had asked why she had ever taken up nursing—and in a country other than her own, too—to be told that it had all been the doing of her guardian, a cousin older than herself, a man, Rimada had declared furiously, who delighted in making her do things she had no wish to do.

      ‘Didn’t you want to be a nurse, then?’ Loveday had asked.

      ‘Of course,’ Rimada had insisted vehemently, ‘but when I wished it, not he. There was a young man, you understand—he wanted to marry me and I thought it might be rather fun, but Adam would not allow it, so I told him that I would retire from the world and be a nurse, and he arranged it all so quickly that I had no time to change my mind.’ She had turned indignant blue eyes upon Loveday, who had said roundly: ‘Oh, Rimmy, what rubbish—no one can make people do things they don’t want to do, not these days.’

      ‘Adam can,’ Rimada had said simply, ‘until I am twenty-five.’

      Now Loveday eyed Rimada’s stormy countenance as she got into her dressing gown. ‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell me that Big Bertha has been at you again?’

      Big Bertha was the Senior Nursing Officer on the Surgical Block where Rimada was in charge of a women’s surgical ward.

      ‘Far worse,’ breathed Rimada, ‘it is Adam.’

      Loveday took the pins out of her hair and allowed it to fall in a thick curtain down her back. ‘Look,’ she began, ‘I’ve had a simply foul time since two o’clock—do you mind if we talk about it over a cup of tea?’

      Rimada was instantly contrite. ‘I am a selfish girl,’ she declared in the tones of one who doesn’t really believe what she is saying. ‘We will make tea and I will myself go to the warden’s office and request sandwiches.’

      Loveday was making for the pantry. ‘You do that,’ she advised. ‘You’re the only one of us who can wheedle anything out of Old Mossy.’ Which was indeed true; perhaps because Rimada had, for the whole of her life, expected—and had—her wishes fulfilled as soon as she uttered them, and Old Mossy had recognized the fact that to say no would have been a useless waste of time. Rimada, Loveday reflected as she spooned tea into the pot, had an arrogance of manner when she wanted her own way—not arrogance, she corrected herself, merely a certainty that no one would gainsay her.

      She bore the tea-tray back to her room and found Rimada already there, the promised sandwiches on a plate and a packet of crisps besides.

      ‘Wherever did you get those?’ she demanded.

      ‘I asked Old Mossy for them,’ Rimada smiled in triumph. ‘I can get anything I want,’ she stated without conceit. Her face clouded. ‘Excepting when the horrible Adam does not wish it.’

      Loveday drank tea and bit into a sandwich. There were a nice lot of them, all cheese, and the teapot was a large one. She relaxed, tucked her feet under her on the bed, added more sugar to her tea and said briefly: ‘Tell.’

      ‘I am in love with Terry,’ began Rimada, a statement which drew forth no surprise on Loveday’s part; Rimada fell in and out of love with almost monotonous frequency.

      ‘That new houseman on Surgical? He’s a head shorter than you are!’

      Rimada frowned. ‘That has nothing to do with it—I do not care in the least. He thinks of me as a Rhine Maiden.’ She looked rapt.

      Loveday looked astonished. ‘A what? But you’re Dutch—they were Germans, weren’t they, with enormous bosoms and dreadfully warlike.’ She studied her friend. ‘He’s got it all wrong,’ she finished in a kindly way, and took another bite of her sandwich.

      Rimada looked put out. ‘It is a compliment.’

      ‘What happened to Arthur?’ asked Loveday. Arthur had been in evidence for some weeks; he worked in the Path Lab, and while a young man of unassuming manner, had been more or less harmless.

      ‘He wears glasses.’

      Loveday nodded. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’ She didn’t much care for glasses herself, although several of the young gentlemen who had engaged her fancy from time to time had worn them. She poured more tea for them both. ‘Well, even if this Terry’s shorter than you are, I don’t suppose it matters. You said something about your guardian—do they know each other or something?’

      Rimada’s eyes glinted with rage. ‘No—how could they? But Terry wants to marry me, and this evening I telephoned Adam and told him that I wished it also. He laughed…’ her voice shook with temper. ‘He said that Terry sounded like a young idiot who was after my money and I could count on him never giving his consent.’

      ‘You’ll be twenty-five in a year’s time,’ Loveday reminded her. ‘That’s not long to wait, he can’t stop you then.’

      ‘I do not wish to wait,’ stated Rimada heatedly. ‘I wish to marry now, and so also does Terry.’

      ‘But he doesn’t earn enough to keep you,’ Loveday pointed out.

      ‘I know that, but we can live on my money. I have a great deal of it, you know.’

      ‘But your guardian won’t let you have it; you’ve just said so.’ Loveday frowned. ‘And I can’t say that I altogether blame him, however dreary he is about it. You don’t know much about Terry, do you? I mean, he’s only been here about three weeks. I know you’ve been out with him, but that’s not very…’

      ‘Do not be an old maid,’ begged her friend tartly. ‘At twenty-seven you are perhaps getting…’ She paused, at a loss for a word.

      ‘Stuffy,’ supplied Loveday cheerfully. ‘I daresay I am.’

      Rimada was instantly penitent. ‘Oh, Loveday, I did not mean that! You are so pretty, and all the men like you and really you do not look as old as you are.’ She smiled engagingly. ‘But you do not love easily, do you? I do not know why—it is so easy a thing to do.’

      ‘Oh, well, I daresay I’ll meet a man I want to marry one day.’

      ‘And if you do not?’

      ‘I’ll not marry. Now, let’s get back to Terry. What’s he got to say about all this?’

      ‘He is most unhappy; he wished to marry me as soon as he could get a licence.’

      ‘Then why doesn’t he? You’re twenty-four, you know.’

      ‘But if I marry before I am twenty-five without Adam’s consent, I do not have any money.’

      Loveday stared at her friend. The conversation was getting repetitive. Terry might be in love, but he might be in love with money as well. The guardian, cagey old dragon though he might be, would naturally think that. ‘I should wait a bit,’ she counselled. ‘Why not go over to Holland and talk to him?’

      ‘Talk to Adam?’ Rimada asked with something like horror. ‘He supposes me to be a child; he laughs a little and tells me to grow up and that I am foolish.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘But perhaps, if I have an idea, dear Loveday, you will help me.’

      ‘Not now, I won’t—I’m dog tired.’

      ‘Silly—not now, of course. But if I should have a very clever idea perhaps I could not carry it out without your help.’

      ‘I am not making any promises.’

      ‘It will be nothing bad, I promise you, but I want my own way and