th his
knee-caps as well. Sir Morgan Bennett had to perform an operation, or
he would have been a cripple for life. As it was, he was about again
in a few weeks, apparently none the worse excepting for a slight
weakness of the left ankle."

"Could he walk upstairs?" I asked.

"Oh, yes; and play golf and ride a bicycle."

"You are sure he broke both knee-caps?"

"Quite sure. I remember that it was mentioned as an uncommon injury,
and that Sir Morgan seemed quite pleased with him for doing it."

"That sounds rather libelous; but I expect he was pleased with the
result of the operation. He might well be."

Here there was a brief lull in the conversation, and, even as I was
trying to think of a poser for Mr. Jellicoe, that gentleman took the
opportunity to change the subject.

"Are you going to the Egyptian rooms?" he asked.

"No," replied Miss Bellingham; "we are going to look at the pottery."

"Ancient or modern?"

"That old Fulham ware is what chiefly interests us at present; that of
the seventeenth century. I don't know whether you call that ancient or
modern."

"Neither do I," said Mr. Jellicoe. "Antiquity and modernity are terms
that have no fixed connotation. They are purely relative and their
application in a particular instance has to be determined by a sort of
sliding scale. To a furniture collector, a Tudor chair or a Jacobean
chest is ancient; to an architect, their period is modern, whereas an
eleventh-century church is ancient; but to an Egyptologist, accustomed
to remains of a vast antiquity, both are products of modern periods
separated by an insignificant interval. And, I suppose," he added
reflectively, "that to a geologist, the traces of the very earliest
dawn of human history appertain only to the recent period. Conceptions
of time, like all other conceptions, are relative."

"You would appear to be a disciple of Herbert Spencer," I remarked.

"I am a disciple of Arthur Jellicoe, sir," he retorted. And I believed
him.

By the time we had reached the Museum he had become almost genial; and,
if less amusing in this frame, he was so much more instructive and
entertaining that I refrained from baiting him, and permitted him to
discuss his favorite topic unhindered, especially since my companion
listened with lively interest. Nor, when we entered the great hall,
did he relinquish possession of us, and we followed submissively, as he
led the way past the winged bulls of Nineveh an