six o'clock
Yesterday had seen a crisis and a super-crisis . In the afternoon the butcher had stood at the back door and shouted and threatened , and he had been followed almost immediately by a stout shabby man with a bald head and good-natured face , who announced that he had come to put a distraint on the furniture which , incidentally , had never been paid for . Edith Stonehouse , with an air of outraged dignity , had lodged him in the library and regaled him on a bottle of stout and the remnants of a cold joint , and it was understood that there he would remain until such time as Christine raised 40 pounds from somewhere . These were mere incidents -- entirely commonplace -- but at six o'clock James Stonehouse himself had driven up in a taxi , to the driver of which he had appeared to hand the contents of all his pockets , and a moment later stormed into the house in a mood which was , if anything , more devastating than his ungovernable rages . He had been exuberant -- exultant -- his good-humour white-hot and dangerous . Looking into his brilliant blue eyes with their two sharp points of light , it would have been hard to tell whether he was laughing or mad with anger . His moods were like that -- too close to be distinguished from one another with any safety .