Free Sirius by Olaf Stapledon Page B

later on. You must be careful not to give it away that you can talk; but you have had some practice at that game already. I'm afraid the job will be terribly dull at times, but most jobs are. For intellectual interest you will have to depend on your own resources. There'll be no chance of reading, but you will be able to make some very interesting observations of animal and human behaviour."
    Sirius listened intently to this long harangue as he walked with Thomas on the crest of the Moel. At last he spoke, slowly and carefully; for Thomas was less practised than the others at understanding him. "Yes," he said, "I'm ready to have a shot at it. Do you think I should be able to come home fairly often?"
    "Oh yes," Thomas replied, in an altered voice. "You probably haven't yet heard that Plaxy is going to boarding school. I'll tell Pugh the whole family will be very disappointed if you are not with us a lot during the holidays, because you are the family-dog, now that Gelert is dead. Pugh will arrange that all right." He added, "I'm afraid you and Plaxy will miss one another badly at first. But you will both get used to it. And after all you must live your lives separately some day, so you had better begin practising now."
    "Yes, of course," said Sirius, but his tail drooped and he fell silent for a long time.
    In fact only once did he speak. He suddenly asked, "Why did you make only one of me? It's going to be lonely being me."
    Thomas told him that there had been a litter of "four of you," and that he alone had survived. "We have tried again many times," he said, "It's fairly easy to produce the Gelert sort, but you are a very different kettle of fish. We have two promising puppies coming on now, but they are too young yet for us to size up their powers. And there's a super-chimp, though of course she's no good to you. She's a problem, sometimes a nitwit and sometimes too clever by half."
    There was always a great hustle in the house when a child was being made ready for school, When it was the child's first term, the preparations were even inure prolonged. Clothes had to be bought or made. Books, writing materials, sports gear, had all to be procured. As the day approached, Plaxy became more and more absorbed in her urgent affairs. Sirius wondered at her cheerfulness. It was supposed to be a gallant pose in the face of impending sorrow, but often it "smelt" genuine. There was little fur him to do in the preparations, save for occasional messages, so he had far too much time to brood on the future, Plaxy's cheerfulness was, indeed, partly a cloak to cover her desolation at the prospect of leaving home and all that she loved. Had she been younger she might not have felt the break so badly. On the morning of her departure she happened to meet Sirius alone on the landing. She surprised him by dropping her bundle of clothes and kneeling down to hug him. With schoolgirl sentimentality but with underlying sincerity of feeling, she said, "Whatever becomes of me I shall always belong to you. Even when I have been unkind to you I belong to you. Even if--even if I fall in love with someone and marry him some day, I shall belong to you. Why did I not know it properly until to-day?" He said, "It is I that am yours until I die. I have known it ever so long--since I bit you." Looking into his grey eyes and fondling the dense growth on his shoulder, she said, "We are bound to hurt one another so much, again and again. We are so terribly different." "Yes," he said, "But the more different, the more lovely the loving."

CHAPTER V

SHEEP-DOG APPRENTICE
    ON the day after Plaxy went to boarding school Thomas took Sirius over to Pugh at Caer Blai. On the way he talked a great deal to the dog about his future, promising that when he had been with Pugh a year he should see something of the human world beyond the sheep country, and possibly settle in Cambridge. Sirius listened and consented; but he was an anxious and a sorrowing animal, and his tail