"Cornelius," said Humphrey, "you will be able to lead the conversation to the Anglo-Saxon period."
"That period is too early, brother Humphrey," said Cornelius. "We shall trust to you to turn the steam in the direction of the Renaissance."
Humphrey shifted in his seat uneasily. Why this unwillingness in either Twin to assume the lead on a topic which had engaged his attention for twenty years?
Mr. Beck shook his head.
"I most wish now," he said, "that I hadn't asked them. But it's a thundering great honour. Mr. Dunquerque did it all for me. That young gentleman met these great writers, I suppose, in the baronial halls of his brother, the Earl of Isleworth."
"Do we know Lord Isleworth?" asked Cornelius of Humphrey.
"Lord Isleworth, Cornelius? No; I rather think we have never met him," said Humphrey to Cornelius.
"None of your small names to-night," said Gilead Beck, with serious and even pious joy. "The Lord Mayor may have them at Guildhall. Mine are the big guns. I did want to get a special report for my own Gazette, but Mr. Dunquerque thought it better not to have it. P'r'aps 'twould have seemed kind o' shoddy. I ought to be satisfied with the private honour, and not want the public glory of it. What would they say in Boston if they knew, or even in New York?"
"You should have a dinner for poets alone," said Humphrey, anxious for his brother.
"Or for Artists only," said Cornelius.