“Why, aren’t you getting on, father?”

“Well, considering that my second-’and business depended on you entirely—­and that that’s where the profits are to be made nowadays—­That’s where I’m ’andicapped.  I can’t operate without knowledge; and from hour to hour I’ve never any seecurity that I’m not being cheated.”

Isaac would gladly have recalled that word.  Keith met it with silence, a silence more significant than any speech; charged as it was with reminiscence and reproof.

“Now, what I propose—­”

“Please don’t propose anything.  I—­I—­I can’t do what you want.”

Keith positively stammered in his nervous agitation.

“Wait till you hear what I want.  I’m not going to ask you to make catalogues, or stand behind the counter, or,” he added almost humbly, “to do anything a gentleman doesn’t do.”  He looked round the room.  The materials of the furnishing were cheap; but Keith had appeased his sense of beauty in the simplicity of the forms and the broad harmony of the colours.  Isaac was impressed and a little disheartened by the refinement of his surroundings, a refinement that might be fatal to his enterprise.  “You shall ’ave your own private room fitted up on the first floor, with a writing table, and a swivel chair.  You needn’t come into contact with customers at all.  All I want is to ’ave you on the spot to refer to.  I want you to give me the use of those brains of yours.  Practically 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.”