Greene, who had known Harland Longwood all his life and had thought he knew all his old friends, nodded with the lack of surprise of a man who had read a good many surprising wills.

“She has a comfortable annuity and neither needs nor desires financial help from me. Mrs. Meomartino is my niece Elizabeth. Florence’s girl,” he added, remembering that at one time Gilbert had been half in love with Florence.

“Whom is she married to?”

“One of our Surgical Fellows. He’s pretty well fixed. Family money.”

“I must have met him,” Greene said with reluctance. Longwood had noticed that Gilbert hated to admit not being able to identify the hospital’s younger people, as if it were still a small, intimate organization.

“There’s nobody else,” Dr. Longwood said. “That’s why I wanted to endow the chair for Kender without delay. It’s long overdue.”

“The Harland Mason Longwood Chair of Surgery,” Greene said, tasting the title as he had tasted the brandy.

“The Frances Sears Longwood Chair,” Dr. Longwood said.

Greene nodded. “That’s very nice. Frances would have liked that.”

“I’m not sure. I think it might have embarrassed her,” he said. “I want you and the others to understand that this isn’t going to lower the department’s budget, Gilbert. That isn’t the purpose of the gift at all. I want to utilize some of the funds this is going to free.”

“In what way?” Greene said guardedly.

“To pay for a new surgical instructorship, for one thing. We haven’t been developing our own faculty people. I think we’d best start, and damned soon.”

Greene nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds all right to me. Do you have a candidate in mind?”

“Not really. There’s Meomartino, but I don’t know yet if he’s interested. And a young fellow named Silverstone who’s just joined us and who looks awfully good. There’s no need to make up our minds now. That’s the Department’s job. We can keep our eyes open and let the nominating committee get us the best man available in time for next July.”

Greene rose to leave. “How are you really, Harland?” he said as they shook hands.

“I’m fine. I’ll let you know when I’m not,” he said, aware that Greene was receiving reports about his condition.

The board chairman nodded. He hesitated. “I was thinking just the other day about those Saturday afternoons we used to have out at the farm,” he said. “They were good times, Harland. Really splendid.”

“Yes,” Dr. Longwood said, astonished. I must look much worse than I had thought, he told himself, to wring this much sentiment out of Gilbert.

He dropped back into his chair after Greene had left and thought of the summer afternoons when, a young Visiting Surgeon, he would make afternoon rounds and then lead three cars full of people—house officers, staff men, an occasional trustee—to the farm in Weston where they would play hilarious softball on a rough, slanting meadow until it was time to eat the Saturday suppers of frankfurters, baked beans and brown bread that Frances had prepared.