lly you'd be a sleeping partner; but we should 'alve
profits from the first."

"Thanks--thanks" (his voice seemed to choke him)--"it's awfully good
and--and generous of you. But I can't."

"Why not?"

"I've about fifteen reasons. One's enough. I don't like the business,
and I won't have anything to do with it."

"You--don't--like--the business?" said Isaac, with the air of
considering an entirely new proposition.

"No. I don't like it."

"I am going to raise the tone of the business. That's wot I want you
for. To raise the tone of the business."

"I should have to raise the tone of the British public first."

"Well--an intelligent bookseller has a good deal of influence with
customers; and you with your reputation, there's nothing you couldn't
do. You could make the business anything you chose. In a few years we
should be at the very head of the trade. I don't deny that the house
has been going down. There's been considerable depression. Still, I
should be in a very different position now, Keith, if you hadn't left
me. And in the second-hand department--_your_ department--there are
still enormous--e_nor_mous--profits to be made."

"That's precisely why I object to my department, as you call it. I
don't approve of those enormous profits."

"Now look 'ere. Let's have a quiet talk. We never have 'ad, for you
were always so violent. If you'd stated your objections to me in a
quiet reasonable manner, there'd never have been any misunderstanding.
Supposing you explain why you object to those profits."

"I object, because in nine cases out of ten they're got by trading on
another person's ignorance."

"Of course they are. Why not? If he's ignorant, it's only fair he
should pay for his ignorance; and if I'm an expert, it's fair I should
get an expert's profits. It's all a question of buying and selling. He
can't sell what he hasn't got; and I can't sell what I haven't got.
Supposing I've got knowledge that he hasn't--if I can't make a profit
out of _that_, what can I make a profit out of?"

"I can't say. My own experience of the business was unfortunate. It
struck me, if you remember, that some of your profits meant uncommonly
sharp practice."

"Talk of ignorance! Really, for a clever fellow, Keith, you talk a
deal of folly. There's sharp practice in every trade--in your own
trade, if it comes to that. Supposing you write a silly book, and some
of your friends boom it high and low, and the Public buys it for a