Lessons were not to begin until the following morning, and the six boarders were feeling in consequence a trifle disconsolate. They did not know what to do with themselves. They had explored the place the day before. They had visited the kitchen-garden and the flower-garden, and the paddocks and the shrubberies and the lawns, and they had wandered down towards the river. There seemed to be nothing special to do. The tennis-lawn was not properly mowed for tennis, and anyhow the net was not out, and there seemed to be no croquet-ground anywhere. In consequence, there was nothing whatever to do but to pace up and down under the shadow of the trees a little way from the house.