TOMMY would not learn his lessons. He wouldn’t do his sums, he upset the ink over his geography book, and smashed his slate. He tore a leaf out of his grammar and made a paper boat of it. He ought to have been punished, but he wasn’t, because his Mamma thought that dear Tommy must be ill or he wouldn’t behave so badly; so, thinking the fresh air would be good for him, she asked him to pick her a bunch of buttercups out of the meadow, but Tommy said he would rather not—he didn’t want to do anything ever again.

Tommy was not a bad little boy generally, but sometimes the idle fairy, who is no bigger than a grain of mustard-seed, though very strong, sat in his ear and whispered naughty things to him. He threw all his lesson-books in a heap on the school-room floor, and went out to the orchard, where he ate seven big apples one after the other, and lay on his back looking up at the apple-trees, and trying to feel glad that he had had his own way. Presently he sighed.

“What do you want?” said a voice, and Tommy saw a little red-cheeked man in a green cap, swinging on one of the apple boughs and looking at him.

“I only want to do nothing,” whined Tommy; “it’s very hard they won’t let me.”

“Oh, if that’s all,” said the little man, “come with me,” and, taking Tommy’s hand, he led him through a convenient little door which opened in the trunk of the apple-tree. It led straight into the most beautiful garden in the world.

“Now then,” said the little man, “do nothing as hard as you like.” And he plumped Tommy down on a grassy bank.

Presently a troop of merry children came by with balls and hoops. Tommy jumped up to catch a golden ball that rolled his way.

“Lie down, sir,” said the little man, for all the world as though he had been a dog, Tommy thought; “you wanted to do nothing, remember!”

“I meant no lessons,” said Tommy.

“You didn’t say so,” said the little man. “Besides, all those children have done their lessons, or they would not be allowed to stay here.”

Some more children came by riding on white ponies. One pony had no rider. Tommy started up. It would be lovely to ride that long-tailed pretty little pony.

“Lie down, sir,” said the apple-man crossly; “you came here to do nothing and I’m going to see that you do it.”

“I am doing something anyhow,” said Tommy suddenly. “I’m sitting down.”

“All right,” said the apple-man; “we’ll soon settle that;” and a strong hook suddenly caught Tommy by the back of his clothes and hung him up in the air. “Now you are not doing anything, anyway,” said the little man; “the hook is doing the work.”

Imagine being hung up by a hook just out of reach of everything, while long processions of little green men came and offered you all the things you wanted most in the world—cricket-bats and ferrets, paint-boxes and hard-bake, guinea-pigs, catapults, and white mice, marbles, buns, and sheaves of letters with valuable foreign stamps on them. Tommy cried with rage, but the little apple-man only laughed, and kept saying: “How do you like doing nothing, eh!—jolly, isn’t it?” Then he saw his Mother coming along the path, and to his horror he saw that a leopard was slinking after her. He called aloud, but she did not hear.

“Oh, let me go and drive the leopard away,” he cried to the little green man; “it will eat my Mammy—I know it will. Oh, Mammy, Mammy!” but she did not hear, and the little man said: “Oh, nonsense! if you haven’t got the pluck to master a simple addition sum, you can’t master a leopard, you know”; but Tommy struggled so hard that the hook gave way and he fell with a bounce on the orchard grass. He rushed off to find his Mother. To his delight she was safe, and there was no leopard about in the house or garden.

He threw his arms round her neck. “Mammy,” he said, “I do love you so. I’ll learn everything and do everything you tell me.”

“Ah!” thought his Mother, “the fresh air has done him good.”

But it was not the fresh air; it was the little apple-man.

E. Nesbit.