What is the legal test for an oral agreement?

In considering whether either of the abovementioned oral agreements existed, it is useful to consider the following quote from St. John Tug Boat: The test of whether conduct, unaccompanied by any verbal or written undertaking, can constitute an acceptance of an offer so as to bind the acceptor to the fulfilment of the contract, is made the subject of comment in Anson on Contracts, 21st ed., p. 28, where it is said: The test of such a contract is an objective and not a subjective one, that is to say, the intention which the law will attribute to a man is always that which his conduct bears when reasonably construed, and not that which was present in his own mind. So if A allows B to work for him under such circumstances that no reasonable man would suppose that B meant to do the work for nothing, A will be liable to pay for it. The doing of the work is the offer; the permission to do it, or the acquiescence in its being done, constitutes the acceptance. In this connection reference is frequently made to the following statement contained in the judgment of Lord Blackburn in Smith v. Hughes [(1871), L.R. 6 Q.B. 597 at 607], which I adopt as a proper test under the present circumstances: If, whatever a man’s real intention may be he so conducts himself that a reasonable man would believe that he was consenting to the terms proposed by the other party and that other party upon that belief enters into a contract with him, the man thus conducting himself would be equally bound as if he had intended to agree to the other party’s terms [footnotes omitted].[3] Before a binding contract will be implied, the circumstances must give rise to an inference that the alleged acceptor has consented to the work being done on the terms upon which it was offered.[4]