CHAPTER XVII
A HOSPITAL WEDDING
Peace, with writing pad and pencil in hand, climbed laboriously up into the deep window recess overlooking the wide lawns of Danbury Hospital, and propped her crutches against the sash, so that by no chance they could fall to the floor out of her reach while she was composing her weekly letter to St. Elspeth.
"I've got so much to write her," she sighed, chewing her pencil abstractedly. "I wish I could work a typewriter. 'Twould be so much easier to 'tend to all my letters then. It's tiresome writing things by hand. If it wasn't Elspeth, I wouldn't try today. It's so lovely and cool just to sit here and watch folks pass along the street. I 'most wish now that I had gone with Gail and Dr. Dick in their auto.—There, that's the first thing I must tell Elspeth. She'll be awful glad to know Gail is going to have such a nice husband. And the ring he gave her is too pretty for anything. Everyone has diamonds for their 'gagement rings, but it takes someone with brains to think up a ring out of sapphires and topazes, 'cause his birthday is in September and hers in November. When I get married, that's the kind of a ring I want, only I hope my husband's birthday stone is a ruby, 'cause I like them best of all."
Peace paused in her soliloquy long enough to write the date at the top of the page; then again thrust the pencil point into her mouth as she gazed reflectively out of the open window.
"Well," said a voice with startling abruptness almost at her elbow, "I shouldn't want to be in her shoes. No matter which place she chooses someone is going to feel hurt."
"That's what she gets for being so popular," laughed another voice, which Peace recognized as that of Miss Keith.
"You should say 'they,' instead of 'she,' for Dr. Race is as popular as Miss Wayne," interposed a third speaker; and the pair of startled brown eyes peering around the corner of the window seat beheld a quartette of white-capped nurses seated at a long table in the hallway, busy with heaps of snowy cotton and great squares of surgeon's gauze.
"I wonder what Miss Wayne has done now?" thought Peace, when, as if in echo of her thoughts, the fourth member of the little group asked hesitatingly, "What is all the fuss about? You see, I am so new here that I don't understand."