Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones Page B

covered the sky parted for a moment, letting through a silvery shaft of light. The lorry gleamed. Then, somehow, oil was spurting from it, spraying the gate all over, until it was black and dripping. Sirius threw back his head and laughed his dog’s laugh toward the place where the clouds had parted.
    “Thank you!”
    Then the smell rolled over his sensitive nose. He backed away, sneezing and choking and frantically pawing his face. The men in the tanker, equally frantic, ran about shouting and turning stopcocks. Duffie stormed out from the house and spoke cold and shrill about careless idiots and the risk of fire.
    Sirius rather thought Duffie got some money from the oil company to replace the gate. But nobody touched the gate. The Duffield family seldom bothered with things like that and, besides, the weather turned terrible. For six weeks, rain lashed down, hail bounced in the yard, and it grew colder daily. Sirius lay shivering in his shelter, watching sleet pile into transparent drifts with bubbles embalmed in them, and then the rain rattle down and melt the drifts again. He spoke to Sol about it, rather reproachfully, in one of the few glimpses he had of him.
    “Blame the Zoi for some of it,” said Sol. “But you creatures always grumble about precipitation. You’d grumble even worse if you didn’t get it. It won’t hurt you to wait a month. And you didn’t want to live with that smell of oil, did you?”
    “No,” said Sirius. “That’s true. Thanks.”
    At the end of February, the weather turned mild and chilly. By this time, the gate was clean, except for the fastenings, which were black and sticky still. Sol beamed pale yellow from a pale blue sky. “You’re not far off full grown now,” he observed. “How’s your memory?”
    “Not very good,” Sirius said glumly. Though his green nature was now always with him, his dog nature lay warm and stupid infront of it, just behind his eyes, and blotted out great tracts of the green.
    “It’s bound to improve,” Sol said cheerfully, and strode on his way.
    Sirius stood up and stretched, almost as carefully and thoroughly as Tibbles did. Tibbles herself was sitting on the wall. She watched, rather offended. When Sirius finished, she sneezed and was about to turn away. But her lime-green eyes widened and she stared when Sirius, instead of lying down again, backed firmly to the end of his rope and went on backing. His collar slid up over his ears, stuck a moment and then fell off over his nose.
    “That was clever,” Tibbles said. “Can you get it back on again?”
    “I expect so,” said Sirius. He advanced on the gate, waving his tail joyfully. “Can you show me how to get this open?”
    “We are bold, aren’t we?” said Tibbles. “I’ve told you—I can do the bolt at the bottom, but I can’t reach the other fastenings.”
    “I can reach the others if you show me how they work,” said Sirius.
    “Very well.” Rather humped and grudging, Tibbles descended from the wall and sat elegantly down at the base of the gate. Sirius watched carefully as she extended a narrow white paw to the knob of the bolt, delicately pushed the knob upward and then patted it gently until it slid greasily back in the oily slot. “There. Can you do that?” she said, sure that he could not.
    “I don’t know. I’ll try.” Sirius raised himself on his hind legs and leaned against the gate, full stretch. Like that, he was now rather taller than Kathleen. The top bolt was within easy reach of hisclumsy right paw. He raised the paw and batted at the bolt with it. Luckily, it was slightly stiffer. The knob went up to the right position and stuck there, and Sirius had to come down for a rest at that stage. Tibbles looked superior. But Sirius heaved himself up on his back legs again and gave the knob a sideways swipe, hasty and strong. As he sank down, the bolt went rattling back.
    “That was quite clever,” Tibbles said patronizingly.
    “That’s what I thought,”