seven o’clock
He had come down from one of the Universities not long ago , and was now charged with the reformation of society . In connection with the rest of the group of very able young men he had drawn up a scheme for the education of labor , for the amalgamation of the middle class and the working class , and for a joint assault of the two bodies , combined in the Society for the Education of Democracy , upon Capital . The scheme had already reached the stage in which it was permissible to hire an office and engage a secretary , and he had been deputed to expound the scheme to Mary , and make her an offer of the Secretaryship , to which , as a matter of principle , a small salary was attached . Since seven o'clock that evening he had been reading out loud the document in which the faith of the new reformers was expounded , but the reading was so frequently interrupted by discussion , and it was so often necessary to inform Mary `` in strictest confidence '' of the private characters and evil designs of certain individuals and societies that they were still only half-way through the manuscript . Neither of them realized that the talk had already lasted three hours . In their absorption they had forgotten even to feed the fire , and yet both Mr. Basnett in his exposition , and Mary in her interrogation , carefully preserved a kind of formality calculated to check the desire of the human mind for irrelevant discussion . Her questions frequently began , `` Am I to understand -- '' and his replies invariably represented the views of some one called `` we . ''