“Thank you. If it will not inconvenience you, we will come to-morrow and have you minister to us. You have been very kind to come at all. I hope we will not seem too large an undertaking for you. At least, since you have approved of our system and government here, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are assisting us in a time of great need.” “Why, of course, of course,” said the Doctor at once. “I shall be only too glad. That is what I am for, after all. I am a doctor, you know, a physician—even if I have become a naturalist in my later years. At what hour will you be ready for me?” “At dawn,” said the Moon Man. Even in these modern days ideas of time on the Moon seemed strangely simple. “We will wait on you at sunrise. Till then, pleasant dreams and good rest!” THE TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER Doctor Dolittle Opens His Surgery on the Moon Even the garrulous Polynesia was too tired to talk much more that night. For all of us it had been a long and steady session, that interview, tense with excitement. The Moon Man and his Council had barely departed before every one of us was dozing off without a change of clothes or a bite to eat. I am sure that nothing on Earth—or Moon—could have disturbed our slumbers. The daylight was just beginning to show when we were awakened. I am not certain who was the first to arouse himself (probably John Dolittle) but I do know that I was the first to get up. What a strange sight! In the dim light hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gigantic insects, all invalids, stood about our camp staring at the tiny human physician who had come so far to cure their ailments. Some of these creatures we had not so far seen and never even suspected their presence on the Moon: caterpillars as long as a village street with gout in a dozen feet; immense beetles suffering from an affliction of the eyes; grasshoppers as tall as a three-storey house with crude bandages on their gawky joints; enormous birds with a wing held painfully in an odd position. The Doctor’s home had become once more a clinic; and all the halt and lame of Moon Society had gathered at his door. The great man, when I finally roused him, swallowed two or three gulps of melon, washed them down with a draft of honey and water, took off his coat and set to work. [Illustration: “_Grasshoppers with crude bandages on their gawky joints_”]