“A manuscript!” said Sir Nicholas, putting on his gold pince-nez. “How interesting, how excessively interesting! Permit me to look at it.” And once more, after an interval of some three hundred years, Nicholas Greene took Orlando’s poem and, laying it down among the coffee cups and the liqueur glasses, began to read it. But now his verdict was very different from what it had been then. It reminded him, he said as he turned over the pages, of Addison’s Cato . It compared favourably with Thomson’s Seasons . There was no trace in it, he was thankful to say, of the modern spirit. It was composed with a regard to truth, to nature, to the dictates of the human heart, which was rare indeed, in these days of unscrupulous eccentricity. It must, of course, be published instantly.

Really Orlando did not know what he meant. She had always carried her manuscripts about with her in the bosom of her dress. The idea tickled Sir Nicholas considerably.

“But what about royalties?” he asked.