‘One strong man is an overmatch for your mob,’ said Mr. Fenellan.

Skepsey toned his assent to the diminishing thinness where a suspicion of the negative begins to wind upon a distant horn.

’Knowing his own intentions; and before an ignorant mob:—­strong, you say, sir?  I venture my word that a, decent lad, with science, would beat him.  It is a question of the study and practice of first principles.’

‘If you were to see a rascal giant mishandling a woman?’ Skepsey conjured the scene by bending his head and peering abstractedly, as if over spectacles.

‘I would beg him to abstain, for his own sake.’

Mr. Fenellan knew that the little fellow was not boasting.

’My brother Dartrey had a lesson or two from you in the first principles, I think?’

’Captain Dartrey is an athlete, sir:  exceedingly quick and clever; a hard boxer to beat.’

’You will not call him captain when you see him; he has dismissed the army.’

’I much regret it, sir, much, that we have lost him.  Captain Dartrey Fenellan was a beautiful fencer.  He gave me some instruction; unhappily, I have to acknowledge, too late.  It is a beautiful art.  Captain Dartrey says, the French excel at it.  But it asks for a weapon, which nature has not given:  whereas the fists . . .’

‘So,’ Mr. Radnor handed notes and papers to Skepsey:  ‘No sign of life?’

‘It is not yet seen in the City, sir.’

’The first principles of commercial activity have retreated to earth’s maziest penetralia, where no tides are! is it not so, Skepsey?’ said Mr. Fenellan, whose initiative and exuberance in loquency had been restrained by a slight oppression, known to guests; especially to the guest in the earlier process of his magnification and illumination by virtue of a grand old wine; and also when the news he has to communicate may be a stir to unpleasant heaps.  The shining lips and eyes of his florid face now proclaimed speech, with his Puckish fancy jack-o’-lanterning over it.  ’Business hangs to swing at every City door, like a ragshop Doll, on the gallows of overproduction.  Stocks and Shares are hollow nuts not a squirrel of the lot would stop to crack for sight of the milky kernel mouldered to beard.

Percentage, like a cabman without a fare, has gone to sleep inside his vehicle.  Dividend may just be seen by tiptoe:  stockholders, twinkling heels over the far horizon.  Too true!—­and our merchants, brokers, bankers, projectors of Companies, parade our City to remind us of the poor steamed fellows trooping out of the burst-boiler-room of the big ship Leviathan, in old years; a shade or two paler than the crowd o’ the passengers, apparently alive and conversible, but corpses, all of them to lie their length in fifteen minutes.’

‘And you, Fenellan?’ cried his host, inspired for a second bottle by the lovely nonsense of a voluble friend wound up to the mark.