"
"That sounds rather libellous; 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?"
"The old Fulham ware is what chiefly interests us at present; that of
the seventeenth century. I don't know whether you would 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.
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