And lessons the children had to do.

However nice the person who is teaching you may be, lessons are lessons all the world over, and at their best are worse fun than peeling potatoes or lighting a fire.
On the other hand, if Mother now had time for lessons, she also had time for play, and to make up little rhymes for the children as she used to do.

She had not had much time for rhymes since she came to Three Chimneys.
There was one very odd thing about these lessons.

Whatever the children were doing, they always wanted to be doing something else.

When Peter was doing his Latin, he thought it would be nice to be learning History like Bobbie.