“Oh, but Mother will be waiting to see me!” exclaimed the girl blankly. O dear, she didn’t want to go, for she was in such a hurry to see her mother and Dick.
“Oh, that will be all right,” nodded her friend quickly. “Mrs. Morrow will stop at the door, and you can tell her you will be along in the next train, for we shall not be long at the hospital.”
Twenty minutes later the three ladies, each with a big bouquet which Nita had insisted upon their taking, were entering a large, bare-looking reception room. “Now, girls,” said Mrs. Van Vorst, “I will hurry up in the elevator and see how the patient is, and then perhaps you can both come and see him—her—” Mrs. Van Vorst’s face grew strangely red—she turned abruptly and hurried from the room.
It was but a few moments when she was back again, and with a bright little nod cried, “Come, Nathalie, my friend is fine this morning, and very anxious to see visitors, so come along!”
“I wonder why the patient wants to see me,” soliloquized the girl in puzzled query. “Isn’t Nita coming?” she cried aloud, seeing the girl standing by the window with an odd little smile on her face.
“Oh, yes, later; only one at a time at present,” was the quick reply.
Nathalie was still thinking how strange it seemed and how smiling Mrs. Van Vorst appeared, when they came to a halt in front of a door in an upper corridor. “Here we are,” said her companion, “now run in and see my friend!” She threw open the door as she spoke.
Nathalie took a step forward, stared a minute with puzzled brows, and then with a loud cry flung herself with outstretched arms upon a figure standing in the center of the room, for it was Dick!
“Oh, how did you get here and—” but the rest was lost, for Dick was hugging her and kissing her in a way that more than astonished the girl, for he had always declared he hated to kiss people. And then he held her off and with shining eyes surveyed the suntanned cheeks of Nathalie approvingly, as he cried, “So you’re back, Blue Robin—and—great guns, as fat as a porpoise, too!”
“But what are you doing here?” inquired the still dazed girl slowly—“are you the lady?”