‘Well, that’s a good one! I thought you gentlemen of London kept your eye on everybody and everything. But you know the Temple Forum?’
‘Oh, certainly I do.’
‘Ah! I am glad to hear that, because I am one of the leading lights of that select assembly.’
‘Well, I am very unfortunate. I cannot remember to have heard you even there; but I must own I seldom went near the place.’
‘Ah, if you had you would have known me well. Many is the speech I have made there. But perhaps you will kindly glance at this?’ taking out of his hat a dilapidated and somewhat greasy paper.
Reluctantly Mr. Wentworth took it.
‘It is an account of one of my lectures before the Minerva Institute at Bullock Smithy.’
‘Bullock Smithy—never heard of that.’
‘Come, Mr. Wentworth, you are a bit of a wag, I see.’
‘Not a bit of it. Never heard of Bullock Smithy in my life.’