Doing Nothing.
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.”