till it
disappeared.

"Well!" he cried, "poor old Dis! Who'd have thought he was such a good
fellow underneath all that sour crust. I _am_ glad," and again as he
walked slowly and thoughtfully back:--"I _am_ glad."

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

STAUNCH FRIENDS.

Time glided on, and it became Gilmore's turn to leave the rectory.
Other pupils came to take the places of the two who had gone, but Macey
said the new fellows, did not belong, and could not be expected to
cotton to the old inhabitants.

"And I don't want 'em to," he said one morning, as he was poring over a
book in the rectory study, "for this is a weary world, Weathercock."

"Eh? What's the matter?" cried Vane, wonderingly, as he looked across
the table at the top of Macey's head, which was resting against his
closed fists, so that the lad's face was parallel with the table. "Got
a headache?"

"Horrid. It's all ache inside. I don't believe I've got an ounce of
brains. I say, it ought to weigh pounds, oughtn't it?"

"Here, what's wrong?" said Vane. "Let me help you."

"Wish you would, but it's of no good, old fellow. I shall never pass my
great-go when I get to college."

"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."

"That's what I do like so in you, Vane," he cried.

"What?"

"You can do all sorts of things so well, and work so hard. Why you beat
the busy bee all to bits, and are worth hives of them."

"Why?" said Vane, laughing.

"You never go about making a great buzz over your work, as much as to
say: `Hi! all of you look here and see what a busy bee I am,' and bett