‘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.

‘Doctor of the ship! with this prescription!’ Mr. Fenellan held up his glass.

‘Empty?’

Mr. Fenellan made it completely so.  ‘Confident!’ he affirmed.

An order was tossed to the waiter, and both gentlemen screwed their lips in relish of his heavy consent to score off another bottle from the narrow list.

‘At the office in forty minutes,’ Skepsey’s master nodded to him and shot him forth, calling him back:  ’By the way, in case a man named Jarniman should ask to see me, you turn him to the rightabout.’

Skepsey repeated:  ‘Jarniman!’ and flew.

‘A good servant,’ Mr. Radnor said.  ’Few of us think of our country so much, whatever may be said of the specific he offers.  Colney has impressed him somehow immensely:  he studies to write too; pushes to improve himself; altogether a worthy creature.’

The second bottle appeared.  The waiter, in sincerity a reluctant executioner, heightened his part for the edification of the admiring couple.

‘Take heart, Benjamin,’ said Mr. Fenellan; ’it’s only the bottle dies; and we are the angels above to receive the spirit.’

‘I’m thinking of the house,’ Benjamin replied.  He told them that again.

’It ’s the loss of the fame of having the wine, that he mourns.  But, Benjamin,’ said Mr. Fenellan, ’the fame enters into the partakers of it, and we spread it, and perpetuate it for you.’