Twice that day there had been some trouble in the office about the trade with the North; Cosmo was therefore to be excused if he immediately sympathised with his father upon the rise of freights to Reikjavick, and the inexplicable dropping off of the demand for English stoves in Iceland. Mr Burden assured his son with remarkable solemnity that he was mistaken. He paused a moment and said: “You probably know, Cosmo, in fact you certainly know by this time, that a portion of our firm’s business is done with the M’Korio Delta.” Cosmo was far too loyal to deny his acquaintance with that fact, but his features showed how little it had occupied his thoughts. Mr Burden paused again and frowned. He went on: “Now, this trade has never been of value to us ... but I have often thought ... I may have been wrong ... I have often thought that it might have been developed if I had looked more closely into the matter.” After a full and yet more fruitful pause, the third, but not the last, in the course of this critical discourse, Mr Burden proceeded with astonishing breadth and grasp to develop that theory of commerce which distinguishes us from our less fortunate rivals. Compelled as I am to condense his diction, I am yet careful to repeat his actual phraseology, in a matter of which he was a master and of which I cannot even call myself a novice. He set forth first that times were not what they had been; that competition was keen; that new markets had to be looked for; our prosperity was indeed increasing, but the ratio of that increase was declining. For a full ten minutes he distinguished in the most lucid manner between actual and comparative growth; finally, he propounded with some hesitation, yet warmly and grandly, as a scheme or suggestion of his own, that the new markets might be expected to arise in new countries. Cosmo, to whose vigorous if quiet mind original theories immediately appealed, was moved to a whole world of thought and allusion by his father’s sudden insight. He recalled examples of success achieved upon such lines; Australia suggested many, Johannesburg many more, nor did he neglect the Western States of America; but he asked what the M’Korio Delta, known so long, tropical, forgotten, could have in common with these? It was then that Mr Burden fully delivered himself of the idea which had so long been maturing in his brain; he hoped—he could not tell why—it was but a hope—yet he hoped that the M’Korio Delta might prove one of those undeveloped tracts of an Empire whose future contained almost infinite possibilities.