eight o’clock
at Dulwich , the Record Office , the papers of the Lord Chamberlain -- everything , in fact , that we thought might contain some allusion to Willie Hughes . We discovered nothing , of course , and every day the existence of Willie Hughes seemed to me to become more problematical . Cyril was in a dreadful state , and used to go over the whole question day after day , entreating me to believe ; but I saw the one flaw in the theory , and I refused to be convinced till the actual existence of Willie Hughes , a boy-actor of Elizabethan days , had been placed beyond the reach of doubt or cavil . ` One day Cyril left town to stay with his grandfather , I thought at the time , but I afterwards heard from Lord Crediton that this was not the case ; and about a fortnight afterwards I received a telegram from him , handed in at Warwick , asking me to be sure to come and dine with him that evening at eight o'clock . When I arrived , he said to me , `` The only apostle who did not deserve proof was St. Thomas , and St. Thomas was the only apostle who got it . '' I asked him what he meant . He answered that he had not merely been able to establish the existence in the sixteenth century of a boy-actor of the name of Willie Hughes , but to prove by the most conclusive evidence that he was the Mr. W. H. of the Sonnets .