thought was a little terrifying, for surely it always ought to matter, else why were people forever asking what time it was! Outside were several million souls,—one could hear the faint drone of them,—to whom time did make a difference, people whose lives were scaled in twelfths and sixtieths, Why didn't the French introduce a metric system of hours,—I'll meet you tomorrow at ten decimal three three three, and if you stretched the threes right across the Atlantic it would still be the same time, which proved the essential foolishness of Arithmetic.
The long windows were wide open and his eyes rested on the green of a circumscribed court that smelt faintly sour. His room was in the shade, but the cream-colored walls across the court were bathed in sunlight, except for still shadows cast by a linden tree.
He got out of bed, stretched, and sank into a low chair facing the window. A woman dressed in black cotton was folding sheets at the window-sill opposite. She glanced over at his pyjama-clad form and gave her pillows a final smack. She thinks I'm lazy, Grover reflected, and so I am, and hope I'll outgrow feeling guilty about it.
Down below a muffled altercation was going on. A dog, he gathered,—doubtless the suspicious buttoneyed little weazle named Mouche with whom he had shaken hands last night,—had been trespassing on the concierge's patch of geraniums, and, the concierge was alleging, loudly, in rather difficult French, that
