tise and practise and practise—” or something almost as long.
Now of course it was very hard for her mother to say all this besides roasting the flesh and tidying the cave, so she made up her mind that when her Prehistoric Husband came home, he must be told about it. And when the sun was at the top of the sky and cast no shadow, and the flesh was roasted brown and fragrant, she dressed it with pungent herbs, and raked the vegetables out of the ashes and hid the dessert in the cool wall of the cave—that was a surprise—and spread the flat rock at the door of the cave and put vine-leaves in her hair and, with Vertebrata, set herself to wait.
There went by what we now know to have been noon, and another hour, and more hours, and all afternoon, and all early twilight, and still her Prehistoric Husband did not come home to dinner. Vertebrata was crying with hunger, and the flesh and the vegetables were ice-cold, and the Prehistoric Wife and Mother sat looking straight before her without smiling. And then, just as the moon was rising red over the soft breast of the distant wood, the Prehistoric Father appeared, not looking as if he had done anything.
