eight o'clock
Presently , in the hotel , he locked his door , opened the window and sat down to think . Two days later , at half past eight in the morning , he walked in on Frederica at breakfast with her two eldest children . He had been able to count on this because the Whitneys had a certain pride in preserving some of the customs of the generation before them ; at least Martin had , and Frederica 's good-natured , rueful acquiescence gave her at once something to laugh at him a little about and a handy leverage for the extraction of miscellaneous concessions . It was n't exactly a misdemeanor to be late to breakfast -- it began promptly at eight o'clock -- but it was distinctly meritorious not to be . Martin never was and he always left the house for his office at exactly eight-twenty . His chauffeur was trained to take just ten minutes trundling the big car down-town , and eight-thirty found him at his desk as invariably as it had found his father before him . It was all perfectly ritualistic , of course .