“It cannot be, Madam.”
“But she said so to me; I heard her say it myself.”
“Madam, it is not possible; remember, therefore, in future, that even fiction should be supported by probability.”
Miss Monckton looked all amazement, but insisted upon the truth of what she had said.
“I do not believe, Madam,” said he, warmly, “that she knows my name.”
“Oh, that is rating her too low,” said a gentleman stranger.
“By not knowing my name,” continued he, “I do not mean literally, but that when she sees it abused in a newspaper she may possibly recollect that she has seen it abused in a newspaper before.”
“Well, Sir,” said Miss Monckton, “but you must see her for all this.”
“Well, Madam, if you desire it, I will go; see her, I shall not, nor hear her; but I’ll go, and that will do. The last time I was at a play I was ordered there by Mrs. Abington, or a Mrs. Somebody, I do not well remember who, but I placed myself in the middle of the first row of the front boxes, to show that when I was called I came.”
He kept his promise, and the huge, slovenly figure, clad in a greasy brown coat and coarse black worsted stockings, was several times seen taking handfuls of snuff, and criticising the actress in his outspoken, growling fashion. She then paid him a visit in his den at Bolt Court, to which he alludes in one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale:—