Book 8, by Helen Wells
Illustrated by Frank Vaughn
Grosset & Dunlap, 1947
"Visiting nurses," Cherry thought, her eyes bright, "bring the gift of life."
--From Cherry Ames, Visiting Nurse, p. 38
When Cherry and her friends move to New York City to join the Visiting Nurse Service and share an apartment in Greenwich Village, Cherry learns about a mysterious recluse in a Victorian mansion.
Chapter 1: Fresh Start
Hearing other people's definite fall plans, Cherry feels forlorn and unsettled as she awaits word on her application to be a Visiting Nurse in New York City with five other members of the Spencer Club--but the acceptance finally arrives.
Chapter 2: The Spencer Club
Cherry finds a disgruntled group at the furnished Greenwich Village apartment that Gwen Jones rented for the nurses to share. Cherry soothes tempers by offering some lighthearted decorating ideas--including painting the battered dining room furniture blue, for fun. Bertha Larsen secretly begins to paint--but without obtaining the landlord's permission.
Chapter 3: The Visiting Nurses
The new Visiting Nurses report to headquarters, with hands slightly blue from painting, having delegated to Cherry the task of explaining their illicit activity to the landlord. They learn about the Visiting Nurse Service and their responsibilities, and are assigned to various centers in the city.
Chapter 4: Ann to the Rescue
Cherry and her friends avoid the nosy janitor by rainy day visits to the Statue of Liberty and, blithely unaware of their bedraggled state, Saks Fifth Avenue. When the janitor sees their blue-painted furniture and threatens them with eviction, Cherry calls on Ann Evans Powell for help, and the girls learn their landlord isn't such an ogre after all.
Chapter 5: Tryout
Cherry meets her supervisor, Dorothy Davis, and accompanies nurse Mary Cornish on home visits, seeing firsthand the kind of service Visiting Nurses provide and its value to the less fortunate.
Chapter 6: Cherry's Own District
After a month as a "floater," Cherry is assigned to her own district, where she notices a once-elegant Victorian mansion. Her first patient is Gustave Persson, an elderly Swedish man.
Chapter 7: The Mysterious Mansion
At the grocery and deli run by Papa and Mama Jonas, Cherry learns that the mysterious mansion belongs to Mary Gregory, a recluse for eighteen years. Stories of strange dancing shadows in the house have made Miss Gregory into the local bogeyman.
Chapter 8: Parties and Clues
Realizing that their concentration on work has limited their social life, the Spencer Club entertains several guests, including Josie's new beau, Dr. Johnny Brent, and Gwen's old friends. Cherry discusses Mary Gregory and says that neighborhood children warned Cherry to avoid the "witch's house."
Although in Visiting NurseGwen doesn't seem to know anyone in New York except the family of an old schoolmate, later she has lots of New York connections: Aunt Kathy and Uncle John Martin, who live on Long Island (Department Store Nurse); Aunt Bess and her husband, who had spent summers on Long Island till a few years before (The Mystery in the Doctor's Office); and two young cousins from Westchester (The Mystery in the Doctor's Office).
Chapter 9: Unknown Neighbors
Cherry makes home visits in her district, noticing how lonely many of the people seem. At Laurel House, the neighborhood settlement house, she talks with a social worker and suggests a get-acquainted Christmas party with an international menu.
Chapter 10: In Hiding
When Mr. Jonas is worried because Mary Gregory has not left a note arranging her usual weekly food order, Cherry and the local policeman enter the old mansion. Cherry finds old-fashioned rooms, quiet and dead-looking, with clocks stopped and three portraits on the wall. In a room upstairs, she confronts Mary Gregory, ill and frightened.
Cherry uses sandalwood soap (p. 4).
Chapter 11: The Secret
After several nursing visits, Mary Gregory finally reveals her tragic story. As a sheltered, shy young girl, on the eve of her wedding, she had lost her fiance and her parents in two tragic accidents, leaving her alone and afraid to face the world, and so had retreated to her childhood home.
Chapter 12: A Welcome Guest
While Wade Cooper is in town on a business trip, Cherry meets an old friend of Mary Gregory's, who had kept in touch through letters. Though sympathetic, the woman has a broken leg and can't travel, but her daughter agrees to see "Aunt Mary" to coax her to return to the world.
This was apparently the first book issued in the second format, with a solid maroon cover and a small boxed picture of Cherry Ames on the front, printed in black; a revised, smiling picture of Cherry appears on the dust jacket spine.
Chapter 13: The Test
Amid preparations for the Laurel House party, Cherry worries about Mary Gregory, but the visit with her old friend's daughter is successful, and Mary takes her first steps back to a normal life. As she leaves the mansion, Cherry starts the old grandfather clock ticking again.
Chapter 14: Christmas Party
Cherry is pleased to see many of her patients--even Mary Gregory--at the Laurel House Christmas party, then hops a train for a birthday and Christmas celebration back home in Hilton, Illinois.
Cherry Ames, Visiting Nurse
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