to bed, Vertebrata saying all the way that she was wide awake, just like in the daytime. And when her mother went back outside the cave, the Man looked up at her wonderfully.
“Trachystomata,” said he (which is to say “siren”), “if the sun-shadow will do the same thing as the moon-shadow, we have found a way to make Vertebrata practise enough.”
In the morning when Vertebrata came out of the cave—she woke alone and dressed alone, just like being grown-up—she found her mother and her father down on their hands and knees, studying the circle in the soft earth and the long sun-shadow of the stick. And her mother called her and she went running to her. And her mother said:—
“Now we will have breakfast, dear, and then you get your pipes and come here and practise. And when you begin, we will lay a piece of bone where the shadow stands, and when I feel the feeling of enough, I will tell you, and you will stop practising, and we will lay another piece of bone on that shadow. And after this you will always practise from one bone to another, forever.”
Vertebrata could hardly wait to have break-
