"But I'll show you how to do it."
"I don't want to be shown. If I've been shown once I've been shown a million times. It's no good! Bracebridge says, 'D'you follow that?' and I say, 'Yes,' and all the time I've not the foggiest conception what he's driving at."
Taking the pen from the other's hand O'Rane wrote down three lines of figures and handed Sinclair the answer.
"And what good d'you think that is?"
"I just think that this is a poorish way of spending a Leave-out Day," O'Rane answered. "If you finish the things off...."
"It's all right, my leave's stopped."
O'Rane propped Sinclair's book against the window-ledge and began writing. Outside the sun was shining in the deserted Great Court, and a southerly breeze caught up the fallen creeper leaves and blew them with a dry rustle across the grey flagstones.
"That's no reason for wasting all day over muck of this kind," he remarked. "One pipe letting water into a cistern at the rate of ten gallons a minute, and another pipe letting it out.... If you make up your mind to get a remove, guess nothing'll stop you. That's the way I regard the proposition. If you make up your mind to do any dam' thing in this world.... Turn up the answers and see if I've got it right. Our old friend the clock: when will the hands next be at right angles? Echo answers 'When?' I wonder if anybody finds the slightest use for all this bilge when once he's quit school. Turn up the answers. He's fixed. How many more have you got to do?"
"Four."