“I never did. And now you’re an Agent.”
“Say, rather, that I practice in the higher walks of Literature. What can be higher than oratory?”
“Quite so. You supply the world—which certainly makes a terrible mess of its speeches—with discourses and after-dinner oratory.”
“Oratory of all kinds, from the pulpit to the inverted tub: from the Mansion House to the Bar Parlour: from the House of Commons to the political gathering.”
“What does your wife say?”
“My wife? Bless you, my dear boy, she doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t suspect. At home I’m the prosperous and successful lawyer: they wonder why I don’t take silk.”
“What? Don’t they know?”
“Nobody knows. Not the landlord of these rooms. Not the boy outside. Not any of my clients. Not my wife, nor my son, nor my daughter.”
“Oh! And you are making a good thing out of it?”
“So good that I would not exchange it for a County Court Judgeship.”