In time, in time, thought Wilbur Larch wearily; he was feeling harassed. Dr. Gingrich and Mrs. Goodhall had prevailed upon the board of trustees; the board had requested that Larch comply with Dr. Gingrich's recommendation of a 'follow-up report' on the status of each orphan's success (or failure) in each foster home. If this added paperwork was too tedious for Dr. Larch, the board recommended that Larch take Mrs. Goodhall's suggestion and accept an administrative assistant. Don't I have enough history to attend to, as is? Larch wondered. He rested in the dispensary; he sniffed a little ether and composed himself. Gingrich and Goodhall, he said to himself. Ginghall and Goodrich, he muttered. Richhall and Ginggood! Goodging and Hallrich! He woke himself, giggling.

'What are you so merry about?' Nurse Angela said sharply to him from the hall outside the dispensary.

'Goodballs and Ding Dong!' Wilbur Larch said to her. {367}

He went to Nurse Angela's office, with a vengeance. He had plans for Fuzzy Stone. He called Bowdoin College (where Fuzzy Stone would successfully complete his undergraduate studies) and Harvard Medical School (where Larch intended Fuzzy to do very, very well.) He told the registrar's office at Bowdoin that a sum of money had been donated to the orphanage at St. Cloud's for the express purpose of paying the medical school expenses of an exceptional young man or woman who would be willing -more than willing, even dedicated-to serve St. Cloud's. Could Dr. Larch have access to the transcripts of Bowdoin's recent graduates who had gone on to medical school? He told a slightly different story to Harvard Medical School; he wanted access to transcripts, of course, but in this case the sum of money had been donated to establish a training fellowship in obsttstrics.

It was the first traveling Wilbur Larch had done since he'd chased after Clara, the first time he'd slept in a place other than the dispensary since World War I; but he needed to familiarize himself with the transcript forms at Bowdoin and at Harvard Medical School. Only in this way could he create a transcript for F. Stone; he begged the use of a typewriter and some paper-'one of your blank transcript forms will make it easier for me'-and pretended to type out the names and credentials of a few interesting candidates. 'I see so many who'd be perfect,' he told them at Bowdoin and Harvard, 'but it's impossible to know if any of them could tolerate Saint Cloud's. We're very isolated,' he confessed, thanking them for their help, handing them back their transcripts (Fuzzy's in the proper place, among the S's).

When he had returned to St. Cloud's, Dr. Larch wrote to Bowdoin and Harvard, requesting copies of the transcripts of a few outstanding graduates; he had narrowed the choices down to these few, he told them. A copy of Fuzzy's transcript came in the mail with the others.

When Larch had visited Harvard Medical School, he'd taken a Cambridge post office box in Fuzzy's name. Now {368} he wrote to the postmaster there, requesting the mail for F. Stone be forwarded to St. Cloud's. The P.O.box address would be useful, too, if young Dr. Stone were to pursue his zealous instincts to a mission abroad. Then he sent an empty envelope to the Cambridge address and waited for its return.

When the letter came back to him-when he was sure the system worked-he composed the rest of the history regarding F. Stone and his adoptive family (named Eames) and sent it along to the board of trustees, together with Fuzzy's address. He did not have to invent anything regarding Curly Day; he cringed to write the name Roy Rinfret; and he told the truth regarding Snowy Meadows and most of the others, although he had difficulty typing 'the furniture Marshes' without laughing out loud, and when he came to the case of Homer Wells, he thought very carefully about how to word the matter of Homer's heart.

Among the members of the board, there wasn't a heart specialist or a radiologist, or even a surgeon; there was a very old GP who, Dr. Larch felt sure, never read anything at all. Larch didn't count Dr. Gingrich as a doctor; he counted psychiatrists as nothing at all, and he felt confident that he could bully Mrs. Goodhall with the slightest terminology.

He confessed to the board (isn't everyone flattered by a confidence?) that he had refrained from mentioning the matter of Homer's heart to Homer; he admitted to stalling but argued that worrying the boy might contribute to his problem, and he wanted the boy to gain confidence in the outside world before burdening him with this dangerous knowledge-yet he intended to burden Homer with it, shortly. Larch said he had informed the Worthingtons of the heart defect; they might therefore be more than usually protective of Homer; he had not bothered to explain the presence of the actual murmur to them, or to detail the exact characteristics of pulmonary valve stenosis. He would be happy to provide the board {369} with such details, should they request them. He had fun imagining Mrs. Goodhall scrutinizing an X-ray.

He concluded that he thought the board's request for the follow-up reports had been a good idea and that he had enjoyed himself immensely in preparing them; contrary to needing an administrative assistant to perform such a service, Dr. Larch said he had felt 'positively energized' by the 'welcome task'-since, he added, following up on his orphans' adoptive lives was always on his mind. And sometimes right off the top of my head, he thought.

He was exhausted, and forgot to circumcise a newborn baby boy whom Nurse Angela had prepared for the operation. He mistook a woman awaiting an abortion for a woman he'd delivered the previous day, and therefore told her that her baby was very healthy and doing fine. He spilled a small amount of ether on his face and needed to irrigate his eye.

He became cross because he had over ordered prophylactics -he had far too many rubbers around. Since Melony had left, no one was stealing the rubbers anymore. When he thought of Melony, he became worried, which also made him cross.

He returned to Nurse Angela's office and wrote a report, which was real, concerning David Copperfield's lisp; he neglected to mention that David Copperfield had been delivered and named by Homer Wells. He wrote a slightly fictitious report on the orphan called Steerforth, remarking that his delivery was so straightforward that Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela had been able to handle it entirely without a doctor's assistance. He wrote the truth about Smoky Fields: the boy hoarded food, a trait that was more common in the girls' division than in the boys', and Smoky was beginning to exhibit a pattern of insomnia that Larch had not witnessed at St. Cloud's 'since the days of Homer Wells.'

The memory of those days brought instant tears to his eyes, but he recovered himself sufficiently to write that {370} both and he and Mrs. Grogan were worried about Mary Agnes Cork: she had exhibited frequent depressions since Melony's departure. He also told the truth about Melony, although he chose not to include any acts of vandalism. Larch wrote of Mary Agnes: 'Perhaps she sees herself as inheriting Melony's former position, but she hasn't the dominating character that usually attends any powerful or leadership role.' That idiot Dr. Gingrich is going to like that, Larch imagined. 'Role,' Larch said aloud, scornfully. As if orphans have the luxury of imagining that they have roles.

Impulsively, he went to the dispensary and inflated two prophylactics. Got to use these things up in some way, he thought. He used a laundry-marking pen to write the name GINGRICH on one prophylactic and the name GOODHALL on the other. Then he took these jolly balloons and went in search of Nurse Angela and Nurse Edna.

They were in the girls' division, having tea with Mrs. Grogan, when Dr. Larch found them.