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corridor a telephone began to ring.
    "I thought it was too good to last." Pete sighed as he half rose. "Bet you a dollar it's for me."
    But when Mrs. Frazer opened the glass door it was Lesley she beckoned. Harry Dayborough had already been kept waiting too long.
    "Come on, come on. I asked you - what do you see on the X-ray plate?" Harry Dayborough tapped his foot impatiently and waited for Lesley's reply. "You call yourself a doctor, don't you? Is there or isn't there an active ulcer crater?" He held out the X-ray frame which Nan Baillie had just hung at the foot of the new patient's bed. "Don't tell me we've been wasting the taxpayers' money on your medical education." He spoke loudly, enjoying his captive audience of patients.
    Lesley was acutely aware of every eye and ear trained on this little drama taking place in the centre of the ward. Her face burned with shame and indignation. She could no longer think straight about the X-ray in front of her. The boys were right, there was a limit to the indignities one should meekly endure for the sake of the desired quiet life. It didn't work. Today had amply demonstrated that. The more she tried to accommodate him, the more churlish became the invective he hurled at her. It was almost as though he took a vicious delight in seeing how far she would let him go.
    "Dr. Dayborough," she forced herself to speak quietly in contrast to his own loud, hectoring tones, "would you mind coming outside the ward for a minute?" She walked quickly towards the entrance, giving him no chance to argue with her.
    Once through the swing doors she toned to face him, not sure till she did so that he had in fact followed her out.
    "Dr. Dayborough, if you've anything like that to say to me again I'd be obliged if you'd wait till we're out of earshot of patients. You're the Registrar of this ward and I've always respected your position and authority, but it's unfair of you to undermine mine."
    His face was suffused with rage.
    "You little upstart! Your authority? What authority do you think you have?"
    "I'm sorry. Authority was the wrong word." Lesley took it back. "That wasn't what I meant. But you try to make me look small in front of patients. Ordinarily that wouldn't matter She struggled to go on, "but you impair their confidence in what's being done for them. That could affect their rate of recovery. You're cutting away the ground from under their feet."
    He took a step towards her and for a moment she thought he was going to strike her.
    "You little fool!" His hand dropped. There was even more menace in his lowered tones. "I'll talk to you however and wherever I like. You, on the other hand, will live to regret that you ever saw fit to speak to me like that." He turned to reenter the ward, but the door of the duty room opened and Sister Bishop stepped out in his path.
    "You are not going back into my ward in that frame of mind." Her tone was icy. "Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me what you think you're doing, creating a scene like this in the corridor." She glanced pointedly at the glass partition which opened on to one of the side rooms. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself." She gripped the sleeve of Dayborough's white coat and took the still wet X-ray out of his other hand. "You can just come in here and wait until you've cooled off." She turned to the probationer nurse who had come out of the sluice. "Nurse, please ask the ward maid to brew a fresh pot of tea." She gave Dayborough a firm push in the direction of the duty room. "Stop sulking. You know perfectly well that I'm right. You're so pig-headed. You wouldn't have a cup at four o'clock and now everyone has to suffer because your blood sugar's low and your temper high."
    "Stop fussing, woman." He tried to shrug off her restraining hand. "You females sicken me. You seem to think a cup of tea - like a baby's comforter - is the answer to everything." He turned truculently towards the duty room. "Always trying to mother somebody. Beats