“If I could but buy plenty of such sapphires,” said Mr. Burns, “on a foggy afternoon like this, when the air is as yellow as a cairngorm, and sell them the first summer-like day of spring, I should make a fortune in a very few years.” “But you wouldn’t do it, Mr. Burns?” Cosmo ventured to suggest, in some foreboding anxiety, caused by the tone in which the man had spoken: he would fain have an express repudiation of the advantage thus to be obtained. “Why not?” rejoined Mr. Burns, lifting his keen gray eyes, with some wonder in them, and looking Cosmo straight in the face. His mind also was crossed by a painful doubt: was the young man a mere innocent? was he “_no a’ there_?” “Because it is not honest,” replied Cosmo. “Not honest!” exclaimed the jeweller, in a tone loud with anger, and deep with a sense of injury--whether at the idea that he should be capable of a dishonest thing, or at the possibility of having, for honesty’s sake, to yield a money-making principle, I do not know; “I present the thing as it is, and leave my customer to judge according to his knowledge. Is mine to be worth nothing to me? There is no deception in the affair. A jeweller’s business is not like a horse-dealer’s. The stone is as God made it, and the day is as God made it, only my knowledge enables me to use both to better purpose than my neighbour can.” “Then a man’s knowledge is for himself alone--for his own behoof exclusively--not for the common advantage of himself and his neighbour?” said Cosmo. “Mine is so far for my neighbour, that I never offer him a stone that is not all I say it is. He gets the advantage of his knowledge, let us say, in selling me wine, which he understands to fit my taste with; and I get the advantage of my knowledge in selling him the ring that pleases him. Both are satisfied. Neither asks the other what he paid for this or that. But why make any bones about it; the first acknowledged principle in business is, to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest.” “Where does the love of your neighbour come in then?” “That has nothing to do with business; it belongs to the relations of social life. No command must be interpreted so as to make it impossible to obey it. Business would come to a stand-still--no man could make a fortune that way.” “You think then that what we are sent here for is to make a fortune?” “Most people do. I don’t know about _sent for_. That’s what, I fancy, I find myself behind this counter for. Anyhow the world would hardly go on upon any other supposition.” “Then the world had better stop. It wasn’t worth making,” said Cosmo. “Young man,” rejoined Mr. Burns, “if you are going to speak blasphemy, it shall not be on my premises.” Bewildered and unhappy, Cosmo turned away, left the shop, and for years never entered it again.