And now the wine was pushed about; and whether it was the little "tiff" which had taken place during the dinner, or whatever might be the cause, considerable difficulty was felt, for some time, by all the company, in attaining that sense of freedom, that warm hilariousness, which an Englishman always looks for, over the bottle, and by the charm of which, and not by the animal gust for the liquor, drinking usages have become so widely established. This uneasy feeling, however, was dissipated by degrees; and then, by the natural reaction of the human spirits, the zest for good-fellowship grew unbounded. And yet this over-heated, steamy sort of boon companionship manifested itself exactly as might be expected among "highly respectable commercial gentlemen," though poor Diggory was too ignorant of the genus to make the proper calculation. They neither called each other by familiar names, nor sang, nor shouted, nor huzzaed, nor laughed, till they hiccupped. Compliments, that out-heroded Herod in their gorgeousness of dress and brilliancy of colouring,--good-wishes,--mighty, vast, profound, coming from the "bottom of their hearts,"--for the prosperity of each other in their undertakings,--testimonies to each other's "respectability" (_always_ first), honour, candour, probity, (take the first catalogue of the virtues you find, and supply all the rest,)--flowed out of the smiling, bubbling, fountain of their wine-warmed hearts, and wreathed itself so fantastically into the vaporous shapes of words (if that be nonsense, take it for a specimen of their speeches),--that Diggory Lawson was puzzled to determine whether they were more lunatic or tipsy. Luckily, he found a little relief, both corporeally and mentally in nibbling at the remnant of the dessert, which the whole company forgot for wine and speechifying. Yet he had but a torturous time of it, and was still "the lad who felt like a fish out of water." It should scarcely be omitted, that by the natural way of ascending from the mediocre to the sublime, so genial to the minds of "highly respectable commercial gentlemen," the last hour of the speechifying was entirely occupied by that grand problem,--that question of questions,--that important and absorbing interrogation of "_the_ commercial room,"--"Is it not time to smoke?"