Nurse Varney was the first member of the staff to recognize that Betsy Cawthorn's amazing progress in mastering the use of her artificial legs was only half the battle in her recovery. Indeed, Nora saw real danger signals. The young woman was concentrating so completely, almost fanatically, on strengthening the muscles of her torso and thighs and managing her skeleton metal legs that she ran the risk of either straining her system or driving herself with such compulsion that she was bound to become discouraged and give up prematurely. To protect the girl's balance and long-range mending, it was obligatory that someone lead her to new experiences and new concerns. And that job fell to Nora.

She started by picking up on the hint that Betsy had given during one of the familiarization tours. As they passed the corner where the Bridge Fanatics congregated, the players had teased her about learning their game and she had replied, half in jest, that she might do just that. Now Nora took her to the cardplayers and said: 'This young woman needs something to pass the hours. She can't be sweating in rehab all day,' and they took her in, arranging her wheelchair so that she could look over the shoulder of one of the players who would whisper explanations of what he or she was doing. With the assistance of two books by Charles Goren that Nora brought her from the library, Betsy learned the game at a minimal level.

Most of the men and women made up teams at random, leaving the expert players to themselves, and Betsy fell in with a group who played poorly enough to find a place for her. The two male members were Muley Duggan and Harry Pidcock, a quiet, inoffensive Pennsylvania farmer. She was told by Nora that both men were married, but that their wives lived separately from them on the second floor of the health-services building-what this meant she did not at first understand. The fourth member was Marcia Raborn, wife of the senator who played with the experts. Betsy was delighted when she knew enough to make her first finesse. She had obtained the bid and was playing in hearts, and her partner, Muley Duggan, had laid down the A-Q-8-7 of spades, so when she led to his spades, hoping to catch the opponents' King, she intended to play the Ace until Muley coughed so loudly that she knew she must be about to make an error. She studied the matter until it dawned on her that it was much better to play the Queen, for if Mr. Pidcock on her left had the King, she would be sure of making two spade tricks. It worked so successfully that for the rest of the session she finessed everything, learning that if she held 9-7 in her hand she could play the 7 and isolate the 8 on her right. Of course, she tried the device when there was no reason to do so, but she had mastered one of the fundamental plays of bridge, and from that solid start she could progress to the other basics. In less than two weeks she was playing respectable beginner's bridge and was busy memorizing the Goren system of bidding.

At about the time she learned about jump bids, she also learned more about the mysterious responsibility that both Muley Duggan and Mr. Pidcock had on the second floor of the health-services building. One evening after the bridge game ended, she asked Pidcock whether his wife was improving in her recovery in Assisted Living, and he looked at her with brimming eyes as he replied: 'She's there permanently, I'm afraid. She has advanced Alzheimer's, and there seems to be no cure.'

Such a statement astounded her, for she had only vaguely heard of the disease, and when she started to probe for an explanation, Mr. Pidcock excused himself and left. Nor did Muley Duggan care to discuss his wife's illness, but when the men were gone, the senator's wife lingered by her wheelchair and said: 'You were touching on delicate matters, Betsy. Those two men face one of the most terrible afflictions we have here in the Palms.'

'They don't look as if they had any illness.'

'They're fine. It's their wives who have Alzheimer's.'

'What is that? I heard about it in Chattanooga but never took the time to find out exactly what it is. Please tell me about it.'

Mrs. Raborn proceeded to describe the disease in simple terms insofar as she understood it and concluded: 'So for reasons we don't understand, the brain goes haywire, and there's nothing even the finest doctors can do. They're working like mad to solve this riddle, but up to now they haven't got very far.

'So don't grow impatient with Muley and his gross jokes, or with Mr. Pidcock and his fussy ways. Those men are living saints, and you and I should have such husbands-by the way, is there a husband lurking behind the potted plants in your life?'

'No,' Betsy said, but she blushed so revealingly that Mrs. Raborn thought: So Nora was right. She's infatuated with the doctor. And why not.

'Well, when you get one, be sure he's as truly admirable as Muley and Pidcock. They tend to their wives faithfully, look after them week after week, but neither of the women even recognizes them, neither knows that this strange man coming to see her is her husband.' She took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes and broke into a soft chuckle: 'I sometimes tell the senator: "If that disease ever struck me, I doubt you'd be as good a husband as Muley and Pidcock are," and he says, "I suppose not." I could bash him.'

Betsy, moved by what she had heard, asked: 'Would it be possible for me to see these women? I'm totally bewildered,' and Mrs. Raborn said: 'That would be easy. You'd be startled, for they're as beautiful as they were on their wedding days. Mrs. Umlauf, that little woman who keeps so busy, she volunteers in Health and would be happy, I'm sure, to show you what fine facilities they have over there. You'll like Berta Umlauf, a true Christian. She survived what I'm told were two Alzheimer's men in her family, although her father-in-law wasn't diagnosed as such.' When Mrs. Raborn dropped Betsy off at Nora's office, she told the nurse: 'I think this young explorer is ready to tour Assisted and Extended, to see how we operate there. I was wondering if she could accompany Mrs. Umlauf on her duties?'

'First-rate idea. Thanks for the suggestion,' and when Mrs. Raborn left her in Nora's office the nurse explained: 'I'm in charge of those two floors, but it would be better for you to see them through Berta Umlauf's eyes, since she's a fellow resident.'

'Mrs. Raborn said Berta visits her floors every day and is indispensable. Is she paid for this?'

'Heavens, no!'

'You mean she volunteers? Out of the goodness of her heart?'

'You got it right.' After getting two Cokes, Nora explained in detail one of the miracles of almost any good retirement center: 'We get women here, cross section of the country, who have served their communities all their lives. For no pay. They help run the hospitals, the libraries, the church Sunday schools, the women's organization of the American Legion. They are God's right-hand servants, and without them this would be a pitiful country.'

She said that she had organized such women in the Palms into the Golden Angels and provided each member with a bright yellow jacket: 'They wear them proudly as they move about Health, bringing loving care and attention to the bedridden.

'From the moment Mrs. Umlauf started to live here, she wanted to be a Golden Angel. If I'd rejected her I think she might have shot me. These days if she has to be absent from her rounds, she comes and apologizes to me. God didn't make many like her, but when we get one she does the work of seven. When I turn you over to her, Betsy, you are close to the heart of that wing up there.'

Two days later, when Mrs. Umlauf was asked if the girl in the wheelchair could accompany her on her rounds she cried: 'Oh, the people would be pleased to meet someone as young and pretty and vibrant as you, Miss Cawthorn. They've heard you were here and how you got here, that dreadful smashup.' Wheeling Betsy to a special elevator, she said: 'Miss Betsy, we'll start with the second floor, Assisted,' and within the first few moments there, Betsy understood the comfort that Mrs. Umlauf provided. As they moved from room to room the feisty little woman engaged in chatter or discussions of the day's news. To some she brought flowers, to others books, and even though she had been in residence only briefly, everyone seemed to know her and responded to her interest in their well-being. Mrs. Umlauf pointed out: 'Everyone on this floor, except for the Alzheimer's patients, is convinced that she or he will be leaving very soon, either going back to their apartment in Gateways or to their homes in the Tampa Bay area.'

Betsy was wheeled into Marjorie Duggan's room, and for the first time in her life young Betsy Cawthorn, child of affluence, saw an Alzheimer's patient. She was astounded at the cameo-like beauty of the woman, who was in her late sixties but looked a serene thirty-five, her silvery hair beautifully coiffed, and her trim figure enhanced by a lace-trimmed morning gown. Betsy was amazed at the elegance of her face, its skin pale and almost translucent, like that of the women in Pre-Raphaelite paintings. She was, as she lay there in bed, beautiful to look at, but she could not read books or comprehend a newspaper, or look at television with understanding. She did like music, but merely responded viscerally to the beat-the structure and significance of the melodies she could no longer grasp.

As Betsy remained transfixed by the sight of this cruelly wasted life, Muley Duggan entered the room and almost shouted: 'It's my bridge partner!' It was pitifully apparent that the bedridden woman did not recognize her husband, as indeed she had not for many years.

Back in the hall, Mrs. Umlauf assured Betsy that the cases of men with the disease were just as harrowing, and as they sat at a table overlooking the pond below, she told briefly of how her father-in-law, Otto, and her husband, Ludwig, had died of Alzheimer's. 'Ludwig,' she said, 'was a walker, and I tell you this because the huge man whom we'll see next is a prodigious walker. Let him have free access to the elevator, he'd be downstairs in a flash and out the front door. We might not find him for two days, way down the countryside.'

When they reached the man's room they found a big placid fellow staring out the window at birds. They stayed only a short while and outside his door Mrs. Umlauf said: 'The floor above isn't like this one at all. Up there hope does not exist. It can be cruel. Do you still want to try it?'

'Yes,' Betsy said with no bravado. 'The more I see, the better I'll understand things,' and back they went to the elevator.

The floor presented a striking incongruity: the decorations were aggressively bright as if the occupants lived in a constant state of euphoria, but the patients themselves were colorless and listless and obviously awaiting death. Betsy noticed the difference in how people here greeted Mrs. Umlauf, their tested friend, from how those below, most of whom expected to be released from Assisted Living, had greeted her.

But volunteers like Mrs. Umlauf did bring warmth and hope. She talked intelligently with the old people and let them know that she was just about their age, but luckier in that her health was still pretty good. Also, these people could read, and watch television and enjoy music: 'They especially like the afternoon talk shows when Oprah and Donahue and Sally Jesse Raphal bring those unbelievable human beings on the screen to discuss their woes or their weird lifestyles or their defiance of accepted behavior; like the man who had been sleeping with three sisters and saw nothing wrong in it, or the woman who was lending her womb to her daughter who could not have a baby. They spent some time trying to figure that one out,' Mrs. Umlauf said. 'What was the official relationship of the mother to the baby or the husband, whose sperm had been used, to his mother-in-law?'

To complete her rounds Mrs. Umlauf looked into a room that terrified her but that she felt obligated to cover. Room 312 contained one of the ugly aspects of the Palms, a very old woman stretched out on a bed with a tall mechanical gantry reaching out over her. From it was suspended a network of electrical wires, plastic feeding tubes and intravenous delivery systems sticking into her arms for the providing of chemical food substances in liquid form. The woman was obviously brain-dead, and had been since before the day of Berta's first visit to the floor, but through the brilliance of mechanical wizardry the various functions of her body could be kept going, all except those of her brain, which had ceased functioning nearly two years earlier.

Berta went through her routine: 'Can you hear me, Mrs. Carlson? Mrs. Carlson, do you want to be turned over to ease your bedsores? Mrs. Carlson, do you see my hand in front of your eyes?'

There was no response, nor would there ever be, barring the miracle of Lazarus. The harsh truth, however, was that many doctors in America, most courts, and almost all legislators hoped for a recurrence of that amazing incident when a man clearly dead rose and resumed his life. And to keep that religious faith alive, about once a year in America, a woman like Mrs. Carlson, certifiably dead for two or five or ten years, did miraculously revive and give renewed hope to those who prayed for a repetition of such a phenomenon. The caretakers on the third floor kept hoping for such marvels.

Mrs. Umlauf, who had prayed diligently for such divine deliverance in the case of her three family members, had learned not to hope, but she did voice one wish over which she did have some control: 'Do not let me or anyone I love wind up in some Room 312.'

'Why do they allow this to go on?' Betsy asked.

'The law. We're not allowed, on this floor, ever to terminate a lifesaving procedure without legal permission, and that's almost impossible to get. So the miracles of medicine keep life continuing, but of course it isn't really life.' As she left the room she said: 'It's abhorrent, this place, and I cannot understand how it's allowed to continue,' and Betsy agreed.

As Berta was about to take Betsy back to Nora's office she was intercepted by a very young nurse who said: 'Mrs. Pawling in 319 is dying and wants you to help her make one last phone call, but they won't let her. Please come.'

When Berta and Betsy entered the room they could see that Mrs. Pawling had not long to live and they were appalled by what her problem was: 'I want to phone my lawyer in a little town near Indianapolis, but they won't let me.'

'Who won't?'

'Nurse Grimes. All I'm allowed is local calls.'

'I'll speak to Nurse Grimes,' Mrs. Umlauf said, but when she did, the administrator for the floor said firmly and with an obvious show of disgust: 'That Pawling woman again! Her children have given strict orders, "No more long-distance calls." '

'Can't I ask for an exception? I'm willing to pay for the call myself.'

'No exceptions,' Grimes said. 'If we did allow her to call, we'd have to pay for it. Orders.'

'Could I call downstairs?'

'Of course,' and she shoved the intercom over to her.

When Mrs. Umlauf got the central desk she said: 'Delia, I want you to allow Mrs. Pawling, 319, to call Indiana. Yes, I know it's forbidden, but charge the call to me. What? You've never done it before. Ask Mr. Krenek, he'll authorize it.' When she received permission she pushed the intercom back to Nurse Grimes, who scowled so fiercely that Berta thought, as she returned to Room 319: I wonder why she bothers to work here? She could certainly get a job in a munitions factory.

When she asked Mrs. Pawling what she wanted to talk to her lawyer about, the woman whispered: 'The outcome of my son-in-law's appeal. He's been in jail two years.' She sighed: 'I begged Elinor not to marry him, but he sweet-talked her.' When the call went through, the old woman asked feebly: 'Erik, what news?' She listened, sighed again and said: 'You promised that this time ...' There was obviously a long explanation, at the end of which she said: 'I'm sure you did your best, Erik, and if it wasn't my own daughter I'd say, "Let him rot in jail," but she does want him out. Just like the last time.' She told him to keep trying, bade him good-night and asked Berta: 'Did you pay for that call?' When Berta put up her two palms to show it was nothing, the old woman said with grief in her voice: 'Thank you. To me it was important, but my son and his wife who are paying for this room despise their brother-in-law, understandably.' She started to weep, and when Berta tried to comfort her she whispered like a little child: 'It's all ending so wrong. It wasn't meant to end this way.'

When Mrs. Umlauf delivered Betsy to Nora's office, the nurse could see that she had been deeply moved by what she had seen on floors two and three, for she said in a subdued voice: 'It was so eye-opening! When you spend your time in the luxury quarters in Gateways and dine in that handsome room, and you see the women with their Cadillacs, you get the feeling that the Palms is reserved for millionaires and the well-to-do. But all the time upstairs, and perhaps nearer to God, are these ordinary people who are struggling to stay alive. It's really sobering.'

Nora was gratified to see Betsy's new maturity and her empathy for the less fortunate residents. She judged that now was the time to get down to basics: 'You're in the proper frame of mind, child. And now you have to plan ahead. Three, four more months, you're going to have to start looking around. We'll have done all we can for you, and then it will be up to you to build a new life for yourself. I suppose your daddy has enough to support you for a while?'

'My mother left me a trust fund, and on his own account he's not poor. But he has two other daughters, you know.'

'Why haven't they come down to see you? It's not so far.'

'They live in the North, Chicago and Omaha, and they were on hand right away when I was in the hospital. But yes, I can afford to look around a bit when I get home.' She paused in a manner that suggested that her plans did not involve returning to Chattanooga in a hurry: 'Nora, I've been deeply moved by watching you, the way you affect the lives of so many people. What's your secret?' and the black woman said: 'I think you gots to love people. I mean the good and the bad, the living and the dying. Just accept them, find out what's eating them, and help them find an easier way. I truly likes to help peoples.'

Betsy said: 'You seem to speak in two tongues. High school English when you first meet the public, then old-style black lingo like we hear in Tennessee when-What's your rule for using polite as against down-home?'

'That would be hard to say, Miss Betsy. Maybe, the way you ask it, I get back to down-home Alabama black earth when I'm talkin' about things that matter, like you and the rest of your life. Let's get back to that. You think you'll ever marry?'

'I've wondered about that a good deal since January and especially when spring came. April can be lovely in eastern Tennessee, and it occurred to me one rainy day when it wasn't so nice that before the accident I had five or six fine young men seriously interested in me, but after the crash they seemed to evaporate.' She shook her head: 'And those that did come around wanted to be big brothers.' She studied Nora to judge whether she should make her next statement, for it did sum up her problem but not in a very ladylike way: 'Boys in high school liked to boast that they were divided into two groups, "Them as go for tits and them as cotton strictly to legs." What could I have to offer a young man in the second category?'

Nora, who suspected correctly that what Betsy really wanted to know was 'What are my chances that Dr. Zorn would ever be interested in someone like me?' knew that she ought to give an answer that would respond to the deeper question, too. Thoughtfully she said: 'When you're a nurse, like I've been, you stay around long enough, you see everything. And I've seen some of the craziest marriages God ever permitted. There was this dwarf girl in our town back in Alabama. Sweet kid about three feet six. We all wondered: "What's gonna happen to Gracey?" And what happened to her was that she married a man nearly six feet tall, and him a white, she a black. But he'd been a missionary and was hipped on Africa.' She continued with other remarkable mismatches in which women who everyone had been sure would never land a husband had done rather well for themselves: 'On the other hand, I could name just as many real beauties, you'd think they had everything in their favor, they never married, or if they did it would have been better if they didn't. So Miss Betsy, I ain't worryin' my head about you. You got too much ridin' in your favor.'

She was pleased that Betsy liked to be with her and was eager to talk about important topics; she knew it was therapeutic for her, an important part of the Palms cure, but she was not nave about the situation. She was aware that Betsy came to see her so often in hopes that she might also catch a glimpse of Dr. Zorn and be seen by him. That, Nora said to herself, is just the way it should be, but she was vaguely perplexed as to why Betsy never spoke openly of her infatuation with the doctor. But now, at the conclusion of her illuminating tour of the other floors, Betsy was eager to speak of those things that really mattered, and she asked with amazing bluntness: 'Nora, what happened in the doctor's divorce?'

'It was a filthy business, I gather.'

'Blame on both sides?'

'Mostly hers. She resented the amount of time he spent on getting his clinic organized. She felt left behind socially, intellectually and I suppose even sexually. So she hooked up-temporarily-one-nighters-with younger men she met in bars and it all went bust.'

'How do you know so much?'

'I have a nurse friend in Chicago. I asked her.'

Betsy contemplated these answers for some moments, then asked: 'You think he'll ever marry again?'

'First four months he was here, all work and bustle, I said: "That one's gun-shy," but since you came I'm beginning to think I was wrong.'

With disarming boldness Betsy asked: 'Then you think I might have a chance?' and Nora replied: 'I've been counting the days till you both woke up. Today, I'm glad to see, you're finally facing up to your task.'

'That's an odd thing to say-a task.'

'Miss Betsy, you were damaged bodily, but it was physical and in the hands of someone like Yancey you can be cured. Andy has a much worse damage, psychological, and only a person with extreme patience and love can cure him.'

'Is he as good a man as I think he is?'

'Better. He does not make wrong or shabby moves. He's quality, but remember, he's gun-shy.'

When Dr. Zorn had first asked Miss Foxworth to show him the confidential list of residents in Gateways whose rents had been lowered so that they could continue living in the Palms even though their investment income had dropped, he noted one name that was vaguely familiar to him. He learned from Miss Foxworth that Harry Ingram was a seventy-two-year-old man who lived off by himself in one of the smallest and least expensive units, and she characterized him as 'that dear little mouse of a man.'

Zorn, eager to understand all aspects of retiree management, felt it his duty to seek out one of what someone had called 'our zeros' to see if he could guess why management had extended financial aid to him. So he asked Krenek to arrange a dining table at which he could be alone with Ingram, and when Harry arrived he found him to be quite unprepossessing: a smallish man, less than five five and weighing about a hundred and thirty-five pounds. He had gone bald at the top of his head but had trained the hair on the right side to spread sparsely over the bald spot and to remain there when held down by copious amounts of a heavy pomade. He did not like to look people in the eye, but did not stare down at the floor, as some did. He let his somewhat watery eyes wander from side to side, bringing them to rest at surprising times when he looked someone straight in the eye to make some trivial observation, which he delivered with a gravity more suited to the Gettysburg Address. When he did speak, it was with a slight British accent: 'My grandfather emigrated from Scotland in 1870. He was thrown out really, bad blood in the family, and he became a remittance man in Nova Scotia, but he remained on the rolls of his home in Scotland, and always thought of himself as a Scot. When he had a son in Canada-my father, that is-he registered him at the empire office as a British citizen. But later, when my father grew tired of the cold winters he saved the money that still trickled in from home and moved to Illinois, where the weather was better and where he met a farmer's daughter who owned a bit of land in her own name. Our name was really Ingraham, but when he entered the United States an immigration official said: "Now, that's silly. If it's pronounced Ingram, that's the way we'll spell it in God's country." And Ingrams we became. He never went back to Scotland nor have any of us, but we celebrate Robbie Burns Day in January and we have a few Victrola records of bagpipe music, dreadful stuff.' It had been a long speech for him, so he felt no obligation to converse the rest of the evening.

It had been a dull visit, so Zorn would have been surprised if, when he left the table, someone had predicted: 'Harry Ingram is about to catapult the Palms into national and even international notoriety, and in doing so, will account for a dramatic end-of-year rise in rentals, converting your center into one of the top moneymakers in the Taggart chain.'

These unlikely events started one hot June day at four in the morning with a telephone call from London, where it was already nine o'clock: 'Hello! Am I speaking to the Palms? Have you a tenant named Harry Ingram? Could you put me through to him?'

The night operator who had answered the phone pointed out: 'Sir! It's four o'clock in the morning here. We don't like to call the guests at this hour. They become irritated.'

'I assure you, Mr. Ingram will want to bear the burden of my interruption. Please ring him.' And when a sleepy, not well-focused Harry came to the phone, the man from London gave him startling news: 'Are you Harry Peter Denham Robert Ingram? Good. I have surprising news for you. The eleventh Igraham baronet of Illsworth died yesterday, as his younger brother did two weeks ago. Since neither brother left any heirs, the title passes to the collateral branch of the great Chisholm family, and the heir of that line is you. As of this moment you are now Sir Harry Ingram, Baronet.' Pausing for some moments to allow this astonishing information to register, the London man explained: 'In our system there are many, many men entitled to be called Sir Thomas This or That, and when they die their title dies with them. But anyone with the title Sir Thomas Jones, Baronet, not only has the title, but his heirs also inherit the title. It's rather nice, really, to be a baronet. Am I correct in my records? You have no heirs, male or female?'

'Never been married,' the bewildered baronet replied, at which his informant said: 'As I thought. This means that when you die, barring the birth of a child before then, which I suppose is unlikely ... you are seventy-two? Correct. So at your death the title will pass to another cadet line, the one in Australia. Do you by chance happen to know them? Name of Stanhope? No. Well, that's how the matter stands, and may I be the first to congratulate you, Sir Harry?' and he hung up.

At the same time that the official was informing Harry, his staff was informing the London press corps that one of England's titles had now passed into the safekeeping of an elderly resident in a Florida retirement home, and news of this amazing development had been sent from the London bureaus of the American news agencies to their offices in the United States, where it was instantly circulated to newspapers and radio and television stations. Since the London release had identified the nursing home as the Palms in Tampa, Florida, the telephones in that establishment started ringing, and two television stations soon dispatched camera crews to the scene.

By the time dawn broke, Nurse Varney was already commanding the telephone system while Andy and Ken Krenek were directing traffic. Ambassador St. Pres had been alerted as someone who might understand the niceties of the situation, and he was in Harry Ingram's little room handling the phone there. It was a tumultuous morning at the Palms as word flashed through the halls that our Harry Ingram has inherited a title in England.' It was generally supposed that he was to be at least an earl, more likely a duke.

As the morning progressed Ambassador St. Pres explained again and again: 'In the British hierarchy it's the next-to-lowest title that can be given. Below it is the simple honorific Sir Harry Ingram. Next above that is what he has, Sir Harry Ingram, Baronet. Above that are the viscounts and earls, and above those come the marquis and so on up to the grandest of all, the dukes, Harry Ingram, duke of Sussex, or whatever other majestic title his family might be entitled to.' And that launched the epoch known at the Palms as 'the hunt for British nobility.' Any book that gave the histories of the great families of English history was grabbed at, as were back copies of magazines that had portraits of the various British leaders, biographies of Princess Di and Wallis Warfield Simpson, or anything else that even remotely pertained to the elevation of ordinary Harry Ingram into the aristocracy of Great Britain. Ambassador St. Pres struggled so constantly to correct misperceptions that in frustration he suggested that some night after dinner he would be glad to explain what their respected friend Harry Ingram was getting into.

To his surprise, practically the entire population of Gateways, all hundred and ninety-four, appeared, with latecomers having to bring their own chairs. His talk was a masterpiece of elucidation, delivered in proper ambassadorial style.

'The word nobility, in Great Britain at least, refers only to men and women holding the top five ranks of honors in this descending order: duke, marquis, earl, viscount and baron. They are known as the peerage. Now you must understand that in the British Isles, the honorific Sir is very widely used to bestow a knighthood on any citizen who performs exceptionally well in public life. A leading jockey can become a Sir. A leading actor. Famous cricket players. Queen Elizabeth has awarded the title in honorary form to Reagan and Bush. And it's customary, if a British foreign officer such as an ambassador has served well, to award him the title in recognition.'

'Would you be a Sir in England?' a woman asked, and he said truthfully: 'I suppose my services in Africa might have warranted it. But more important, I would think, is the fact that if the Palms were in some British village, one or two of our residents might well be Sir this or Sir that, and I'll leave it to you to speculate on whom I have in mind.'

This caused some buzzing, after which he said: 'Now you understand that if I were Sir Richard St. Pres, then when I die, my title dies with me. My wife, if I had one, would not be legally entitled to be called Lady St. Pres, but her friends, out of courtesy, would continue to call her so. Then it would vanish. Otherwise the landscape would be cluttered with Knights and their Ladies.' He paused dramatically: 'But the title that our Sir Harry has inherited is a different kettle of fish, because he can write after his name, Bart., meaning baronet, and in that case his title does pass to his heir. But since Harry has no heir, so far as we know, when he dies his baronetcy will pass to the oldest male member of the next cadet line-'

'What does that mean?' a man asked, and he said: 'A subsidiary branch of the family, inherited through some younger brother or close relative. I believe Sir Harry has already been informed that at his death his title passes to the cadet line in Australia. Unless he has a son in the meantime.' This brought laughter, after which the ambassador said in summation: 'I do think it extraordinary that in a nation like ours, which fought a war of independence to break away from the despotic rule of King George III, we should now be royalty-crazy. People magazine would fade away if they couldn't write about Princess Di and Fergie, and those tabloids at the supermarket checkouts would vanish.' He became confidential: 'I was vacationing in that fine Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, out in the Colorado Rockies, years ago, when H. G. Wells and others in Great Britain were agitating for the abolition of the British royal family. Some English guests were distraught by the effrontery of such a suggestion, but one clever Scot among them said: "Not to worry, my friends. The King and Queen will never be dethroned. The people of Iowa would not allow it." And he was correct. We have the best of both possible worlds. The British royal family belongs to us, too, but we leave all their expenses to the Brits.'

When one listener, eager to air her knowledge of matters regal, said: 'Of course, he'll go to Buckingham Palace and the Queen will tap him on the shoulder with a sword-' St. Pres quickly interrupted her. He explained that such a ceremony takes place only when a new title is bestowed, and never for the heir of an existing one. 'Then it becomes purely a family affair,' he concluded, to the obvious disappointment of his audience.

And then everything fell apart when an official at the British embassy in Washington explained that Harry could not inherit the title unless he gave up his United States citizenship.

When the limitations of his title were explained to Harry, he showed no disappointment whatever. When they asked how he could be complacent about the puncturing of a rather grand balloon, he said quietly: 'No problem. I've always been a British subject.'

'But you told me yourself,' St. Pres said petulantly, 'you'd never left the United States. Never been in Britain.'

'My father was so loyal to the crown that in Canada he remained a "loyal subject of the King," as he expressed it. I remember him taking me to an office in Ottawa and registering me as a British citizen.'

'But you told the man from the embassy that you had American citizenship.'

'That's right. In World War Two I volunteered for the United States Army, and you have a law which says that any foreigner who serves in an American uniform fighting against the enemy is entitled to full American citizenship. And I accepted it. So I have dual citizenship, British by birth, American because of my heroism in battle. I received medals, you know.'

And so Harry Ingram of the Palms became the legitimate holder of the baronetcy. In due course the Palms returned to a degree of normalcy that had been abandoned during its intense preoccupation with British aristocracy. But residents continued to refer to the nondescript little man as 'our Sir Harry, Bart.'

When it became obvious that Betsy Cawthorn would soon reach the point when she could try to walk completely alone, with no walker, no cane, no one holding her by the elbow, Dr. Zorn was so pleased by her progress that he called Oliver Cawthorn in Chattanooga: 'Betsy's done wonders. We have this system of parallel bars at handgrip height-maybe two and a half feet apart. A patient who wants to test her new legs can walk between the bars and catch herself if she feels she's about to fall. With that security, Betsy's been walking, yes, truly walking to the end of the bars, then turning around by herself, and walking back.'

When Cawthorn expressed his delight at this news, Zorn added a dampening note: 'Remember, technically she is not walking alone. Those parallel bars close at hand, they're a tremendous help, a mental crutch. The big test comes when she stands completely clear of the bars-with no one to catch her if she falls-and she walks across the room.'

'When might that happen?'

'With Betsy, who knows? Soon, since she feels it's a personal challenge.'

'Would it muddle things if I flew down to visit with her for the next few days?'

'I believe she'd love it.'

So Oliver Cawthorn flew down to Tampa, visited with his daughter and took her out to dinner at Berns', the famous Tampa steak house, where, after the main course, she was handed a menu offering her more than a hundred different desserts to choose from. She selected a New York-style cherry cheesecake and found it delicious. As her father helped her to her room that night, she said: 'It was a memorable evening, Dad. The last of phase one. Tomorrow I'll be walking. And I'd really love you to be here.'

On the next day, only a few months after Bedford Yancey took charge of this crippled girl whose willpower had been destroyed, she entered the rehabilitation center on her walker, moved easily to the parallel bars, which she knew she could depend on for support if she needed it, and stood erect for some moments at the far end of the bars. Then, smiling brightly at Yancey, her father, Nora, and, especially Dr. Zorn, she said with a mock-heroic laugh: 'Stand back while I make my maiden flight!'

With that she stepped forward tentatively, looked as if she might fall, but then recovered her stability and, with a slow smile illuminating her face, confidently moved her left foot forward. Taking a big breath, she paused a moment to smile at her father and Dr. Zorn. Then with her confidence bolstered, she took a series of steps that were miraculously normal. With a cry of triumph and a huge smile she approached the men who were watching with bated breath. They half expected her to end her adventure by precipitately collapsing into someone's arms. But Nora, who was also watching, thought otherwise: She's going to follow this through.

Nora had guessed right, for when Betsy finished her walk, she took three more steps sideways to where Dr. Zorn waited. When she stood face-to-face with him she threw her arms wide, grabbed him for support and kissed him fervently.