He was the slowest boy on earth, and had been sacked at three places in two weeks, so his parents had apprenticed him to a naturalist. But even he found him slow. It took him two hours to give the canaries their seed, three to stick a pin through a dead butterfly, and four to pick a convolvulus. The only point about him was that he was willing.
And what, he asked, having spent a whole afternoon changing the goldfishes' water, "shall I do now, sir?"
The naturalist ran his fingers through his locks.
Well, Robert, he replied at length, "I think you might now take the tortoise out for a run."