‘Never mind the globe-trotters,’ said a third.  ’Look nearer home.  This does for so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, all old men; and every penny of theirs goes.’  Poor devils!’

‘That reminds me of some one else,’ said yet another voice, ’His wife’s at home, too.  Whew!’ and he whistled drearily.  So did the tide of voices run on till men got to talking over the chances of a dividend, ‘They went to the Bank of England,’ drawled an American, ’and the Bank of England let them down; said their securities weren’t good enough.’

’Great Scott!’—­a hand came down on a table to emphasise the remark—­’I sailed half way up the Mediterranean once with a Bank of England director; wish I’d tipped him over the rail and lowered him a boat on his own security—­if it was good enough.’

‘Baring’s goes.  The O.B.C. don’t,’ replied the American, blowing smoke through his nose.  ’This business looks de-ci-ded-ly prob-le-mat-i-cal.  What-at?’

‘Oh, they’ll pay the depositors in full.  Don’t you fret,’ said a man who had lost nothing and was anxious to console.

‘I’m a shareholder,’ said the American, and smoked on.

The rain continued to fall, and the umbrellas dripped in the racks, and the wet men came and went, circling round the central fact that it was a bad business, till the day, as was most fit, shut down in drizzling darkness.  There was a refreshing sense of brotherhood in misfortunes in the little community that had just been electrocuted and did not want any more shocks.  All the pain that in England would be taken home to be borne in silence and alone was here bulked, as it were, and faced in line of company.  Surely the Christians of old must have fought much better when they met the lions by fifties at a time.

At last the men departed; the bachelors to cast up accounts by themselves (there should be some good ponies for sale shortly) and the married men to take counsel.  May heaven help him whose wife does not stand by him now!  But the women of the Overseas settlements are as thorough as the men.  There will be tears for plans forgone, the changing of the little ones’ schools and elder children’s careers, unpleasant letters to be written home, and more unpleasant ones to be received from relatives who ‘told you so from the first.’  There will be pinchings too, and straits of which the outside world will know nothing, but the women will pull it through smiling.

Beautiful indeed are the operations of modern finance—­especially when anything goes wrong with the machine.  To-night there will be trouble in India among the Ceylon planters, the Calcutta jute and the Bombay cotton-brokers, besides the little households of small banked savings.  In Hongkong, Singapore, and Shanghai there will be trouble too, and goodness only knows what wreck at Cheltenham, Bath, St. Leonards, Torquay, and the other camps of the retired Army officers.  They are lucky in England who know what happens when it happens,