n't be vexed with me,
mother. I'm in a beautiful good temper now."

A day or two after this, Basil's mother left home for a fortnight. She
said a few words to him before she went, about his violin lessons, but
not much, for she had heard him practising again with more attention,
and she had begun to hope his impatience and discouragement had been
merely a passing fit. So she only repeated to him what she had said
already. Basil listened in silence, with an expression on his face she
did not quite understand. But she thought it better to say no more,
especially when the boy flung his arms round her neck, and repeated more
than once--

"I do want to please you, little mother; I do, I do," he cried; and her
last sight of him, as the carriage drove away, was standing with his
violin in his arms at the hall-door, pretending to fiddle away at a
great rate.

"He is only a baby, after all," said Lady Iltyd to herself. "I must not
be too anxious about his faults. This fortnight will test his
perseverance about the violin. If he is not going to be steady about it,
he must give it up."

Alas! the fortnight tested Basil and found him wanting. There were some
excuses perhaps. It was very hot, and the half-yearly examinations were
coming on. In his parents' absence it had been arranged that he was to
stay later at school so as to get his lessons done before coming home--a
very necessary precaution; for without his mother at hand to keep him up
to his work, it is to be doubted if the lessons would often have been
finished before midnight! Basil would not have gone to bed and left them
undone--that was not his way; but he would have wasted three hours over
what with energy and cheerfulness might have been well done in one. At
school, under the eye of a master, this was less likely to occur--the
boy was to some extent _forced_ to give his attention and keep up his
spirit, though the master, whose business it was to superintend the
lessons preparing, found his labours increased in no trifling way during
the fortnight of Basil's staying later.

And when he got home after all this hard work, the boy felt inclined for
a romp with Blanche, or a stroll in the garden, far more than for
practising the violin! Half-holidays, too, in hot weather, presented
many temptations. The hay was down in the park on the side nearest the
house, the strawberries were at their prime; there seemed always
something else to do than struggling with the capri