"Yes--one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions."

It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an
unsteady mind. "Sixdoz lions?" he said.

"Didn't you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They are
our monetary units."

"But what was that you said--sixdoz?"

"Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have
altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab
system--tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numerals
now. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for a
dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, a
dozen gross a dozand, and a dozand dozand a myriad. Very simple?"

"I suppose so," said Graham. "But about this cap--what was it?"

The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.

"Here are your clothes!" he said. Graham turned round sharply and saw the
tailor standing at his elbow smiling, and holding some palpably new
garments over his arm. The crop-headed boy, by means of one ringer, was
impelling the complicated machine towards the lift by which he had
arrived. Graham stared at the completed suit. "You don't mean to say--!"

"Just made," said the tailor. He dropped the garments at the feet of
Graham, walked to the bed, on which Graham had so recently been lying,
flung out the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking-glass. As