six o'clock
He wanted to go back and look those windows over again , wanted to go through the whole store , but recognized that though he could have done this when he first arrived , he could not go back and do it now without exciting his friend 's suspicion that sympathy was his motive . He turned about at a point far short of the one he had intended to reach , and made record time back to the city , impelled by an odd wish he could hardly explain , to go by the windows of the great department stores of Kendrick & Company and examine their window displays . Since he was ordinarily accustomed to select any other streets than those upon which these magnificent places of custom were situated , merely because he not only had no interest in them but a positive distaste for seeing his own name emblazoned -- though ever so chastely -- above their princely portals , it may be understood that an entirely new idea was working in his brain . Speed as he would , however , running the risk as he approached the city streets of being stopped by some watchful authority for exceeding the limits , he could not get back to the broad avenue upon which the stores stood before six o'clock . There was all the better chance on that account , nevertheless , for examining the windows before which belated shoppers were still stopping to wonder and admire . Well , looking at them with Benson 's forlorn windows in his mind as a foil , he saw them as he never had before . What beauty , what originality , what art they showed !