four in the afternoon
to be in the best spirits possible . As to Mr. Wititterly , he went about all day in a tremor of delight at having shaken hands with a lord , and having actually asked him to come and see him in his own house . The lord himself , not being troubled to any inconvenient extent with the power of thinking , regaled himself with the conversation of Messrs Pyke and Pluck , who sharpened their wit by a plentiful indulgence in various costly stimulants at his expense . It was four in the afternoon -- that is , the vulgar afternoon of the sun and the clock -- and Mrs. Wititterly reclined , according to custom , on the drawing-room sofa , while Kate read aloud a new novel in three volumes , entitled ` The Lady Flabella , ' which Alphonse the doubtful had procured from the library that very morning . And it was a production admirably suited to a lady labouring under Mrs. Wititterly 's complaint , seeing that there was not a line in it , from beginning to end , which could , by the most remote contingency , awaken the smallest excitement in any person breathing . Kate read on . ``` Cherizette , '' said the Lady Flabella , inserting her mouse-like feet in the blue satin slippers , which had unwittingly occasioned the half-playful half-angry altercation between herself and the youthful Colonel Befillaire , in the Duke of Mincefenille 's SALON DE DANSE on the previous night .