The Moon Is Down Read Online Free PDF Page B

over and over on his lap. Doctor Winter was a man so simple that only a profound man would know him as profound. He looked up at Joseph, the Mayor’s servingman, to see whether Joseph had observed the rolling wonders of his thumbs.
    â€œEleven o’clock?” Doctor Winter asked.
    And Joseph answered abstractedly, “Yes, sir. The note said eleven.”
    â€œYou read the note?”
    â€œNo, sir, His Excellency read the note to me.”
    And Joseph went about testing each of the gilded chairs to see whether it had moved since he had last placed it. Joseph habitually scowled at furniture, expecting it to be impertinent, mischievous, or dusty. In a world where Mayor Orden was the leader of men, Joseph was the leader of furniture, silver, and dishes. Joseph was elderly and lean and serious, and his life was so complicated that only a profound man would know him to be simple. He saw nothing amazing about Doctor Winter’s rolling thumbs; in fact he found them irritating. Joseph suspected that something pretty important was happening, what with foreign soldiers in the town and the local army killed or captured. Sooner or later Joseph would have to get an opinion about it all. He wanted no levity, no rolling thumbs, no nonsense from furniture. Doctor Winter moved his chair a few inches from its appointed place and Joseph waited impatiently for the moment when he could put it back again.
    Doctor Winter repeated, “Eleven o’clock, and they’ll be here then, too. A time-minded people, Joseph.”
    And Joseph said, without listening, “Yes, sir.”
    â€œA time-minded people,” the doctor repeated.
    â€œYes, sir,” said Joseph.
    â€œTime and machines.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œThey hurry toward their destiny as though it would not wait. They push the rolling world along with their shoulders.”
    And Joseph said, “Quite right, sir,” simply because he was getting tired of saying, “Yes, sir.”
    Joseph did not approve of this line of conversation, since it did not help him to have an opinion about anything. If Joseph remarked to the cook later in the day, “A time-minded people, Annie,” it would not make any sense. Annie would ask, “Who?” and then “Why?” and finally say, “That’s nonsense, Joseph.” Joseph had tried carrying Doctor Winter’s remarks below-stairs before and it had always ended the same: Annie always discovered them to be nonsense.
    Doctor Winter looked up from his thumbs and watched Joseph disciplining the chairs. “What’s the Mayor doing?”
    â€œDressing to receive the colonel, sir.”
    â€œAnd you aren’t helping him? He will be ill dressed by himself.”
    â€œMadame is helping him. Madame wants him to look his best. She”—Joseph blushed a little—“Madame is trimming the hair out of his ears, sir. It tickles. He won’t let me do it.”
    â€œOf course it tickles,” said Doctor Winter.
    â€œMadame insists,” said Joseph.
    Doctor Winter laughed suddenly. He stood up and held his hands to the fire and Joseph skillfully darted behind him and replaced the chair where it should be.
    â€œWe are so wonderful,” the doctor said. “Our country is falling, our town is conquered, the Mayor is about to receive the conqueror, and Madame is holding the struggling Mayor by the neck and trimming the hair out of his ears.”
    â€œHe was getting very shaggy,” said Joseph. “His eyebrows, too. His Excellency is even more upset about having his eyebrows trimmed than his ears. He says it hurts. I doubt if even Madame can do it.”
    â€œShe will try,” Doctor Winter said.
    â€œShe wants him to look his best, sir.”
    Through the glass window of the entrance door a helmeted face looked in and there was a rapping on the door. It seemed that some warm light went out of the room and a little grayness took its