"You look like a gnome, Basil," she said. "What have you been doing to
make yourself so hot and dirty?"

"Transplanting, mother. It's nearly done. I've taken a lot of the little
wood plants that I have in my garden and put them down here among the
big shrubs, where it's cool and damp. It was too dry and sunny for them
in my garden, Andrew says. They're used to the nice, shady, damp sort of
places in the wood, you see, mother."

"But it isn't the time for transplanting, Basil. It is too late."

"It won't matter, Andrew says, mother. I've put them in such a beautiful
wet corner. But I'm awfully hot, and I'm rather dirty."

"Rather," said his mother. "And, Basil, your lessons for to-morrow? It's
four o'clock, and you know what your father said about having them done
before you come down to dessert."

Basil shook himself impatiently.

"Oh bother!" he said; "whenever I'm a little happy somebody begins about
something horrid. I've such a lot of lessons to-day. And it's a
half-holiday. I think it is the greatest shame to call it a
half-holiday, and then give more lessons to do than any other day."

At the bottom of her heart Lady Iltyd was a little of Basil's opinion;
but she felt it would do no good, and might do a great deal of harm to
say so. Basil went as a day-scholar to a very good private school at
Tarnworth, the little country town two miles off. He rode there on his
pony in the morning, and rode home again at four o'clock. He liked his
schoolfellows, and did not _dis_like his teachers, but he could not bear
lessons! There was this much excuse for him, that he was not a clever
boy in the sense of learning quickly. On the contrary, he learned
slowly, and had to read a thing over several times before he understood
it. Sometimes he would do so patiently enough; but sometimes--and these
"times," I fear, came more frequently than the good ones--he was so
_im_patient, so easily discouraged, that it was not a pleasant task to
superintend his lessons' learning. Yet he was not without a queer kind
of perseverance of his own--he could not bear to go to bed leaving any
of his lessons unfinished, and he would go on working at them with a
sort of dull, hopeless resolution that was rather piteous, till one
reflected that, after all, he might just as well look cheerful about it.
But to look cheerful in the face of difficulties was not Basil's "way."
With the first difficulty vanished all his brightness and good temper,
and al