“We have been just taking a hair of the same dog,” said Joe. “It was a pleasant party we had last night. Do you know what Bob and I have been talking of for the last half-hour?”
We professed our inability to conjecture.
“Why, then,” continued Joe, “it was about the story that Harlow told last night.”
“The story begins with ‘Humphries told me,’” said Bob.
“And,” proceeded Joe, “for our lives we cannot recollect what it was.”
“Wonderful!” we all exclaimed. “How inscrutable are the movements of the human mind.”
And we proceeded to reflect on the frailty of our memories, moralising in a strain that would have done honour to Dr Johnson.
“Perhaps,” said I, “Tom Meggot may recollect it.”
Idle hope! dispersed to the winds almost as soon as it was formed. For the words had scarcely passed “the bulwark of my teeth,” when Tom appeared, looking excessively bloodshot in the eye. On inquiry, it turned out that he, like the rest of us, remembered only the cabalistic words which introduced the tale, but of the tale itself, nothing.