He made lightning calculations, figuring how long it would take him to get to Natick and back. “Eight o’clock would be better. I’d like to bring somebody.”

“Oh?”

“A girl.”

“Why, Spurgeon, honey! How nice.”

What the hell, he thought resignedly. “On second thought, I’d like to bring three people.”

“Three girls?” she said hopefully.

“She has a mother and father.”

“Wonderful.”

He read the caution that crept into her voice during the single word.

But when Roe-Ellen saw Dorothy, Spurgeon noticed her immediate relief and he knew his mother had been afraid he had become entangled with some little white nooky. The Priests looked at her in her simple brown silk dress and her short African hair and they warmed to her at once. They liked her parents. The Williamses had never been anyplace like the Ritz, but they had dignity and Calvin and Roe-Ellen were simple people. By the time dessert was served the four of them were friends and the New Yorkers had promised to come to the house in Natick for dinner next time they were in Boston.

“Can you stop back for a nightcap?” Calvin asked him as he prepared to leave to drive Dorothy and her parents home.

“Will you still be up?”

Calvin nodded. “Not your mother. But I’ve got some paperwork.”

“Sure, I’ll come back,” Spurgeon said.

When he knocked at the door, Calvin came at once and held a finger to his lips.

“She’s asleep,” he whispered.

There was a sitting-room, but they decided to go across the street to the Public Garden.

Outside, the late night air was sufficiently chill to cause them to turn up the collars of their topcoats, but they found a bench next to a bed of hyacinths that blazed under the lamplight. They sat facing Boylston Street and watched the late traffic drifting by.

“That’s a nice girl,” Calvin said.

Spurgeon smiled. “I think so.”

“Your mother’s been worried about you.”

“I’m sorry,” Spurgeon said. “The internship year is the roughest one. I haven’t had much time off.”

“You could call her on the telephone, once in a while.”

“I’ll call more often,” he said.

Calvin nodded. “This is a nice park. Any fish in that pond?”

“I don’t know. When it gets to be summer there are paddleboats. With big white swans on them.”

“Did you see the lawyer?”

“Yes. He said not to worry. He said for a young doctor nowadays a malpractice suit was routine, like you weren’t a man until the first time you got the clap.”

Calvin looked at him. “What did you say to that?”

“I told him I had seen some mighty ugly cases of the clap, and some of them were owned by mighty poor excuses of men.”

Calvin smiled. “I’m not worried about you,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I worry more about myself,” he said. “Why are you always turning me away, Spurgeon?”