l he could do was to work on like a poor little over-driven slave,
with no pleasure or satisfaction in his task. And many an evening
bedtime was long past before his lessons were ready, for though Basil
well knew how long he took to learn them, and how the later he put them
off the harder they grew, there was no getting him to set to work at
once on coming home. He would make one excuse after another--"it was not
worth while beginning till after tea," or his little sister Blanche had
begged him to play with her just for five minutes, and they "hadn't
noticed how late it was," or--or--it would be impossible to tell all the
reasons why Basil never could manage to begin his lessons so as to get
them done at a reasonable hour. So that at last his father had made the
rule of which his mother reminded him--that he was not to come down to
dessert unless his lessons were done.

Now, not coming down to dessert meant more to Basil than it sounds, and
nothing was a greater punishment to him. It was not that he was too fond
of nice things, for he was not at all a greedy boy, though he liked an
orange, or a juicy pear, or a macaroon biscuit as much as anybody, and
he liked, too, to be neatly dressed, and sit beside his father in the
pretty dining-room, by the nicely arranged table with the flowers and
the fruit and the sparkling wine and shining glass. For though Basil was
not in some ways a clever child, he had great taste for pretty and
beautiful things. But it was none of the things I have mentioned that
made him so _very_ fond of "coming down to dessert." It was another
thing. It was his mother's playing on the piano.

Every evening when Lady Iltyd left the dining-room, followed by Basil
and Blanche, she used to go straight to the grand piano which stood
in one corner of the library, where they generally sat, and there she
would play to the children for a quarter of an hour or so, just whatever
they asked for. She needed no "music paper," as Blanche called it; the
music seemed to come out of her fingers of itself. And this was Basil's
happiest moment of the day. Blanche liked it too, but not as much as
Basil. She would sometimes get tired of sitting still, and begin to
fidget about, so that now and then her mother would tell her to run
off to bed without waiting for nurse to come for her. But not so Basil.
There he would sit,--or lie perhaps, generally on the white fluffy
rug before the fire,--with the soft dim light stealing in