had meant little to him. Thus, a girl had once told him, half seriously:

"Yes, you're a nice boy, just as everybody tells you; a nice, big,
blundering, stupid, Newfoundland-dog boy."

He had laughed good-humouredly, and had forgotten. Now he caught at one
word of it. That might explain it; he was just plain stupid! And stupid
boys either played polo or drove fancy horses or ran yachts--or occupied
ornamental--too ornamental--desks for an hour or so a day. Bob
remembered how, as a small boy, he used to hold the ends of the reins
under the delighted belief that he was driving his father's spirited
pair.

"I've outgrown holding the reins, thank you," he said aloud in disgust.
At the sound of his voice the diver disappeared. Bob laughed and felt a
trifle better.

He reviewed himself dispassionately. He could not but admit that he had
tried hard enough, and that he had courage. It was just a case of
limitation. Bob, for the first time, bumped against the stone wall that
hems us in on all sides--save toward the sky.

He fell into a profound discouragement; a discouragement that somehow
found its prototype in the mournful little lake with its leaden water,
its cold breeze, its whispering, dried marsh grasses, its funereal
tamaracks, and its lonesome diver.