Morning school was over at twelve; most of the children lived in the village, and some but a short way off, so that they could easily run home for their dinner and be back in time for afternoon lessons; Gratian Conyfer was the only one whose home was too far off for him to go back in the middle of the day. So he brought his dinner with him and ate it in winter beside the schoolroom fire, in summer in a corner of the playground, where, under a tree, stood an old bench. This was the dining-room he liked best, and though now summer was past and autumn indeed fast fading into winter, Gratian had not yet deserted his summer quarters, and here the schoolmaster found him half an hour or so before it was time for the children's return. "Are you not cold there, my boy?" he asked kindly. "No, thank you, sir," Gratian answered, and looking more closely at him the master saw he had been crying. "What is the matter, Gratian?" he asked. "You've not been quarrelling or fighting I'm sure, you never do, and as for lessons they went a bit better to-day, I think, didn't they?" But at these words Gratian only turned his face to the wall and wept--wiping his eyes from time to time on the cuff of the linen blouse which he wore at school over his coat. The schoolmaster's heart was touched, though he was pretty well used to tears. But Gratian's seemed different somehow. "What is it, my boy?" he said again. "It's--it's just that, sir--lessons, I mean. I did try, sir. I meant to work with a will, I did indeed." "But you did do better. I knew you were trying," said the teacher quietly. Gratian lifted his tear stained face and looked at the master in surprise. "Did you, sir?" he said. "It seemed to me to go worser and worser." "No, I didn't think so. And sometimes, Gratian, when we think we are doing worse, it shows we are really doing better. We're getting up a little higher, you see, and beginning to look on and to see how far we have to go, and that we might have got on faster. When we're not climbing at all, but just staying lazily at the foot of the hill, we don't know anything about how steep and high it is." Gratian had quite left off crying by now and was listening attentively. The master's words needed no explanation to him; he had caught the sense and meaning at once. "Everybody has to work if they're to do any good, haven't they, sir?" he asked. "_Everybody_," agreed the master. "But wouldn't it be better if everybody _liked_ their work--couldn't they do it better if they did?" he asked. "That's what I'm vexed about, partly. I don't _like_ lessons, sir," he said in a tone of deep conviction. "I'm afraid I'm too stupid ever to like them." The schoolmaster could scarcely keep from smiling. "You're not so very old yet, Gratian," he said. "It's just possible you may change. Besides, in some ways the beginning's the worst. You can't read very easily yet--not well enough to enjoy reading to yourself?"