five o'clock
But suites of apartments did not spring up with her wishes . Large as was the building , she had already visited the greatest part ; though , on being told that , with the addition of the kitchen , the six or seven rooms she had now seen surrounded three sides of the court , she could scarcely believe it , or overcome the suspicion of there being many chambers secreted . It was some relief , however , that they were to return to the rooms in common use , by passing through a few of less importance , looking into the court , which , with occasional passages , not wholly unintricate , connected the different sides ; and she was further soothed in her progress by being told that she was treading what had once been a cloister , having traces of cells pointed out , and observing several doors that were neither opened nor explained to her -- by finding herself successively in a billiard-room , and in the general 's private apartment , without comprehending their connection , or being able to turn aright when she left them ; and lastly , by passing through a dark little room , owning Henry 's authority , and strewed with his litter of books , guns , and greatcoats . From the dining-room , of which , though already seen , and always to be seen at five o'clock , the general could not forgo the pleasure of pacing out the length , for the more certain information of Miss Morland , as to what she neither doubted nor cared for , they proceeded by quick communication to the kitchen -- the ancient kitchen of the convent , rich in the massy walls and smoke of former days , and in the stoves and hot closets of the present . The general 's improving hand had not loitered here : every modern invention to facilitate the labour of the cooks had been adopted within this , their spacious theatre ; and , when the genius of others had failed , his own had often produced the perfection wanted . His endowments of this spot alone might at any time have placed him high among the benefactors of the convent . With the walls of the kitchen ended all the antiquity of the abbey ; the fourth side of the quadrangle having , on account of its decaying state , been removed by the general 's father , and the present erected in its place .