Shea held up a hand. «I’ve got my own reasons, Gert.» Gertrude looked at her wrist watch. She rose. «I have to go on duty. Don’t do anything foolish, Harold. Remember, you’re taking me to dinner tonight.»

«Uh-huh.»

«Dutch.»

Shea winced. «Gert!»

«So long, everybody,» said Gertrude. She departed in a rustle of starched cotton.

Walter Bayard snickered. «Big he-man. Dutch!»

Shea tried to laugh it off. «I’ve tried to train her not to pull those in public. Anyway she makes more money than I do, and if she’d rather have four dates a week Dutch than two on my budget, why not? She’s a good kid.»

Bayard said: «She thinks you’re the wistful type, Harold. She told the super —»

«She did? Goddamn it.»

Chalmers said: «I cannot see, Harold, why you continue to — uh — keep company with a young woman who irritates you so.»

Shea shrugged. «I suppose it’s because she’s the one not impossible on the staff with whom I’m sure I’ll never do anything irrevocable.»

«While waiting for the dream-girl?» grinned Bayard. Shea simply shrugged again.

«That’s not it,» said Bayard. «The real reason, Doctor, is that she got the psychological jump on him the first time he took her out. Now he’s afraid to quit.»

«It’s not a matter of being afraid,» snapped Shea. He stood up and his voice rose to a roar of surprising volume: «And furthermore, Walter, I don’t see that it’s any damn business of yours.»

«Now, now Harold,» said Chalmers. «There’s nothing to be gained by these outbursts. Aren’t you satisfied with your work here?» he asked worriedly.

Shea relaxed. «Why shouldn’t I be? We do about as we damn please, thanks to old man Garaden’s putting that requirement for a psychology institute into his bequest to the hospital. I could use more money, but so could everybody.»