“Oh, that’s mean!” Grace protested. “You’ve kept him waiting out there for almost an eternity. Why don’t you stop this nonsense and see him!”
“It will do him good to wait,” Elinor announced with a touch of severeness in her voice. “He needs a lesson in consideration for other people’s feelings!”
“Oh, dear!” the other girl sighed with envy. “I wish there was a tall, good-looking Marine waiting for me on a night like this!”
Elinor couldn’t help but smile at her roommate’s outburst of simple romanticism. “And if this one was waiting for you instead of for me, what would you do!”
“I don’t know,” Grace confessed in a helpless fashion, “I guess I’d run right out, drag him off to some lonely spot and work a proposal from him if I had to literally choke the words out of his mouth!”
“That’s a good idea,” Elinor replied with secret amusement. “Maybe I’ll try it myself.”
“Really!” the other said as her mouth opened aghast and her eyes widened. “Would you—honest!”
“Any old port in a storm, you know! If he doesn’t speak with natural ease, perhaps your idea of gentle persuasion may help.”
She reached for her blue cape and swung it over her shoulders, stopping to peck Grace’s cheek with a fond kiss as she walked to the other side of the room.
“Be in early!” the lonely, romantic nurse warned, good-naturedly, as Elinor placed her hand on the door knob, swinging the door open.