"Wanted! I!" Piers looked at him from under eye-lids that quivered a little. "Yes," he said, after a moment, with a deliberation that sounded tragically final. "I am quite sure of that, Crowther."
Crowther asked no more. He patted Piers' shoulder gently and rose.
"Very well," he said. "I'll take that six months' trip round the world with you."
"But you can't!" protested Piers. "I never seriously thought you could! I only came to you because—" he halted, and a slow, deep flush mounted to his forehead—"because you've saved me before," he said. "And I was so—so horribly near—the edge of the pit this time."
He spoke with an odd boyishness, and Crowther's lips relaxed in a smile that had in it something of a maternal quality. "So long as I can help you, you can count on me," he said.
"You're the only man in the world who can help me," Piers said impulsively. "At least—" he smiled himself—"I couldn't take it from anyone else. But I'm not taking this from you, Crowther. You've got your own pet job on hand, and I'm not going to hinder it."
Crowther was setting his writing-table in order. He did not speak for a few seconds. Then: "I am a man under authority, sonny," he said. "My own pet job, as you call it, doesn't count if it isn't what's wanted of me. It has waited twenty-five years; it'll keep—easy—for another six months."
Piers got up. "I'm a selfish brute if I let you," he said, irresolutely.
"You can't help yourself, my son." Crowther turned calm eyes upon him. "And now just sit down here and write a line home to say what you are going to do!"
He had cleared a space upon the table; he pulled forward a chair.