adnor 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
execution