"Are you notoriously helpless?"
"Am I not?"
"Well, perhaps. What does it mean, then?"
"It is a civil way of saying, 'Ruin is inevitably before you—gradual descent in the social scale, ending in misery and starvation. Would you be so kind as to go through the process a few thousand miles away, instead of just outside my front door?' I don't say you mean that—"
"I'm sure I won't say I don't," Hammond interrupted him. "Very likely I do: I don't pretend to be any better than my neighbors. But that doesn't matter. If you are so clear-sighted that there's no sending you off under a happy delusion, it would be mere brutality to urge you to undergo sea-sickness in the search for such a fate. As you say, it is attainable here. Will you turn tutor?"
Percival winced: "That sort of thing isn't easy to get into, is it? I doubt if I've the least aptitude for teaching, and I never went to college. I should be a very inferior article—not hall-marked."
"Then write," said Godfrey.
"Cudgel my lazy brains to produce trash, and hate my worthless work, which probably wouldn't sell. I haven't it in me, Godfrey." There was a pause.—"By Jove, though, I will write!" said Percival suddenly.
"What will you write?"
"Anything. I'll be a lawyer's clerk."