“Why?”
“Because I shall never pass the little one. I say, do I look like a fool?”
He raised his piteous face as he spoke, and Vane burst into a roar of laughter.
“Ah, it’s all very well to laugh. That’s the way with you clever chaps. I say, can’t you invent a new kind of thing—a sort of patent oyster-knife to open stupid fellows’ understanding? You should practice with it on me.”
“Come round this side,” said Vane, and Macey came dolefully round with the work on mathematics, over which he had been poring. “You don’t want the oyster-knife.”
“Oh, don’t I, old fellow; you don’t know.”
“Yes, I do. You’ve got one; every fellow has, if he will only use it.”
“Where abouts? What’s it like—what is it?”
“Perseverance,” said Vane. “Come on and let’s grind this bit up.”
They “ground” that bit up, and an hour after, Macey had a smile on his face. The “something attempted” was “something done.”