eight o'clock
Robert Ferguson , in his library , and poor Miss White in the hall , listened with tense nerves for the wheels of the carriage that was to bring David Richie `` to breakfast . '' `` Send him in to me , '' Mr. Ferguson had said ; and then had shut himself into his library . Miss White was quivering with terror when at last she heard the carriage door bang . David came leaping up the steps , his face rosy as a girl 's in the raw morning air -- it was a lowering Mercer morning , with the street lamps burning at eight o'clock in a murk of smoke and fog . He raked the windows with a smiling glance , and then stood , laughing for sheer happiness , waiting for _ her _ to open the door to him . David had had a change of spirit , if not of mind , since he wrote his eminently sensible letter to Elizabeth . He had been able to scrape up enough money of his own to pay at least one of his bills , and things had gone better with him at the hospital , so he no longer felt the unreasonable humiliation which Elizabeth 's proposal had accentuated in him .