I'd go in for it altogether if they'd let me." But that was just the trouble--they wouldn't.

And so in course of time Mr.Spillikins was compelled, for academic reasons, to abandon his life work.

His last words about it were, "Gad! I nearly passed in trigonometry!" and he always said afterwards that he had got a tremendous lot out of the university.
After that, as he had to leave the university, his trustee, Mr.
Boulder, put Mr.Spillikins into business.

It was, of course, his own business, one of the many enterprises for which Mr.Spillikins, ever since he was twenty-one, had already been signing documents and countersigning cheques.

So Mr.Spillikins found himself in a mahogany office selling wholesale oil.