‘I keep it from Colney!’

‘As Vesuvius keeps it from Palmieri when shaking him.’

‘Has old Colney an idea of it?’

‘He has been foretelling an eruption of an edifice.’

The laugh between them subsided to pensiveness.

Mr. Fenellan’s delay in the delivery of his news was eloquent to reveal the one hateful topic; and this being seen, it waxed to such increase of size with the passing seconds, that prudence called for it.

‘Come!’ said Mr. Radnor.

The appeal was understood.

’Nothing very particular.  I came into the City to look at a warehouse they want to mount double guard on.  Your idea of the fireman’s night-patrol and wires has done wonders for the office.’

‘I guarantee the City if all my directions are followed.’

Mr. Fenellan’s remark, that he had nothing very particular to tell, reduced it to the mere touch upon a vexatious matter, which one has to endure in the ears at times; but it may be postponed.  So Mr. Radnor encouraged him to talk of an Insurance Office Investment.  Where it is all bog and mist, as in the City to-day, the maxim is, not to take a step, they agreed.  Whether it was attributable to an unconsumed glut of the markets, or apprehension of a panic, had to be considered.  Both gentlemen were angry with the Birds on the flags of foreign nations, which would not imitate a sawdust Lion to couch reposefully.  Incessantly they scream and sharpen talons.

‘They crack the City bubbles and bladders, at all events,’ Mr. Fenellan said.  ’But if we let our journals go on making use of them, in the shape of sham hawks overhead, we shall pay for their one good day of the game with our loss of the covey.  An unstable London’s no world’s market-place.’

‘No, no; it’s a niggardly national purse, not the journals,’ Mr. Radnor said.  ’The journals are trading engines.  Panics are grist to them; so are wars; but they do their duty in warning the taxpayer and rousing Parliament.  Dr. Schlesien’s right:  we go on believing that our God Neptune will do everything for us, and won’t see that Steam has paralyzed his Trident:  good!  You and Colney are hard on Schlesien—­or at him, I should say.  He’s right:  if we won’t learn that we have become Continentals, we shall be marched over.  Laziness, cowardice, he says.’

‘Oh, be hanged!’ interrupted Fenellan.  ’As much of the former as you like.  He ’s right about our “individualismus” being another name for selfishness, and showing the usual deficiency in external features; it’s an individualism of all of a pattern, as when a mob cuts its lucky, each fellow his own way.  Well, then, conscript them, and they’ll be all of a better pattern.  The only thing to do, and the cheapest.  By heaven! it’s the only honourable thing to do.’

Mr. Radnor disapproved.  ‘No conscription here.’

’Not till you’ve got the drop of poison in your blood, in the form of an army landed.  That will teach you to catch at the drug.’