“They’re all supposed to be nutty to one extent or another,” Gregory said, almost shouting. “I mean, you didn’t want to believe me. Who’d believe one of the patients?”

“Yeah. Well—” George said.

“Man, I sure am sorry I said anything,” Gregory murmured. “I just wanted to prove you wrong in the beginning. Now I’m really sorry I did. I sure don’t want to make it hard on the very guy … that helped me. It wasn’t just my gums, you know. My whole world is better now. My whole life….” He looked to be near tears.

“Look,” George said, reassuringly, “I’ll just talk to Window’s doctor, and Window; nobody else without checking with you. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Gregory said, sounding unconvinced.

“Do you trust my word?” George asked.

“Yeah,” Gregory replied, surprising himself. He realized that he liked George Brainbridge, and Dr. Seven, and anyway he felt as if he’d found real friends for the first time in his life. Only—Window was a friend, too. And he wouldn’t let anything hurt him.

“Of course, there’s no proof that was my grandfather,” George said with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m just taking you both at your word, but for the life of me I can’t see why you’d want to lie. Can you describe the room?”

“I sure can,” Gregory said. “It was all old-fashioned. So was the dentist’s office. I mean, it had weird little wooden tables in it and lace curtains at the window, and a funny dentist’s chair not like the one here at all. There was, uh, Victorian furniture, I guess you’d call it. And in particular a gigantic fern set in a pot by the window—in the dentist’s office. I hid behind it, but I was caught anyway.”

As evenly as he could, George said, “I have a photo in an old album of my grandfather’s office, there was a plant just like that by the window.” He shook his head. “This thing is beginning to make its own peculiar sense, I feel. But I can’t really get a handle on it. What about you, Seven?”

“I don’t believe he’s a ghost,” Seven replied, deciding that it was time for George to know a few more facts of life. “I think that somehow or other, when you aren’t there, time changes and the past appears. Or something like that.”

“You mean, I go out and close the door and bango—inside the house it’s 1900 or something?”

Seven thought that George was going to snort or laugh in disbelief, but instead his face went from initial astonishment to relief.