"Are you a real nurse?"

"Yes."

"Professional?"

"Why do you wish to know?"

"Professional nurses wear a sort of uniform."

"While I look as if I had stepped out of the family album?"

He frowned perplexedly. "Where did I hear that before?"

"Perhaps that first day, in the water-clock tower."

"I imagine I've been in a kind of trance."

"And now you are back in the world again, with things to do and places to go. There is a button loose on that coat under your pillow. Shall I sew it on for you?"