“No, my dear lady,” he continued, passing with approval the turbot au gratin which the waiter exhibited for his sanction, “the great days are over. We live in degenerate times. We must cherish the past; honour those writers⁠—there are still a few left of ’em⁠—who take antiquity for their model and write; not for pay but⁠—” Here Orlando almost shouted “Glawr!” Indeed she could have sworn that she had heard him say the very same things three hundred years ago. The names were different, of course, but the spirit was the same. Nick Greene had not changed, for all his knighthood. And yet, some change there was. For while he ran on about taking Addison as one’s model (it had been Cicero once, she thought) and lying in bed of a morning (which she was proud to think her pension paid quarterly enabled him to do) rolling the best works of the best authors round and round on one’s tongue for an hour, at least, before setting pen to paper, so that the vulgarity of the present time and the deplorable condition of our native tongue (he had lived long in America, she believed) might be purified⁠—while he ran on in much the same way that Greene had run on three hundred years ago, she had time to ask herself, how was it then that he had changed? He had grown plump; but he was a man verging on seventy.