“Help’s pretty hard to get these days,” said the lion. “Animals don’t seem to want to work any more. You can’t blame them—in a way.... Well, seeing you’re in difficulties, I don’t mind doing what I can—just to oblige you—so long as I don’t have to wash the creatures. And I have told all the other hunting animals to come and do their share. The leopards should be here any minute now.... Oh, and by the way, we’ve got a sick cub at home. I don’t think there’s much the matter with him myself. But the wife is anxious. If you are around that way this evening, you might take a look at him, will you?” Then the Doctor was very happy; for all the lions and the leopards and the antelopes and the giraffes and the zebras—all the animals of the forests and the mountains and the plains—came to help him in his work. There were so many of them that he had to send some away, and only kept the cleverest. And now very soon the monkeys began to get better. At the end of a week the big house full of beds were half empty. And at the end of the second week the last monkey had got well. Then the Doctor’s work was done; and he was so tired he went to bed and slept for three days without even turning over. _THE NINTH CHAPTER_ THE MONKEYS’ COUNCIL CHEE-CHEE stood outside the Doctor’s door, keeping everybody away till he woke up. Then John Dolittle told the monkeys that he must now go back to Puddleby. They were very surprised at this; for they had thought that he was going to stay with them forever. And that night all the monkeys got together in the jungle to talk it over. And the Chief Chimpanzee rose up and said, “Why is it the good man is going away? Is he not happy here with us?” But none of them could answer him. Then the Grand Gorilla got up and said, “I think we all should go to him and ask him to stay. Perhaps if we make him a new house and a bigger bed, and promise him plenty of monkey-servants to work for him and to make life pleasant for him—perhaps then he will not wish to go.” Then Chee-Chee got up; and all the others whispered, “Sh! Look! Chee-Chee, the great Traveler, is about to speak!” And Chee-Chee said to the other monkeys, “My friends, I am afraid it is useless to ask the Doctor to stay. He owes money in Puddleby; and he says he must go back and pay it.” And the monkeys asked him, “What is _money_?” [Illustration: “Then the Grand Gorilla got up”] Then Chee-Chee told them that in the Land of the White Men you could get nothing without money; you could _do_ nothing without money—that it was almost impossible to _live_ without money. And some of them asked, “But can you not even eat and drink without paying?” But Chee-Chee shook his head. And then he told them that even he, when he was with the organ-grinder, had been made to ask the children for money.