“Now, Vertebrata, get your practising done and then you may go to play.” (It wasn’t a piano and it wasn’t an organ, but it was a lovely, reedy, blow-on-it thing, like a pastoral pipe, and little girls always sat about on rocks in the landscape, as soon as they had had their breakfasts, and practised.) So Vertebrata took her reed pipes and sat on a rock in the landscape and practised--all of what we now know (but she did not know) would be five minutes. Then she came in the cave, and tossed the pipes on her bed of skins, and then remembered and hung them in their place above the fireplace, and turned toward the doorway. But her mother, who was roasting flesh at the fire, called her back. “Vertebrata,” she said, “did I not tell you to practise?” “I did practise,” said Vertebrata. “Then practise and practise,” said her mother, not knowing how else to tell her to do her whole hour. Her mother didn’t know hours, but she knew by the feel of her feelings when Vertebrata had done enough. So Vertebrata sat on a rock and did five minutes more, and came and threw her pipes on her bed of skins, and remembered and hung them up, and then turned toward the door of the cave. But her mother looked up from the flesh-pot and called her back again. “Vertebrata,” she said, “do you want mother to have to speak to you again?” “No, _indeed_, muvver,” said her little daughter. “Then practise and practise and practise,” said her mother. “If you can’t play when you grow up, what will people think?” So Vertebrata went back to her landscape rock, and this thing was repeated until Vertebrata had practised what we now know (but she did not know) to have been a whole hour. And you can easily see that in order to bring this about, what her mother must have said to her the last time of all was this:-- “I want you to practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and practise 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.