three o'clock in the
afternoon
He was free to wander whithersoever chance led him . Arriving in London from Plymouth late on a Thursday evening , he took a bus-driver 's holiday on Friday . Finding a tunnel under the Thames in full progress near the hotel , he sought the resident engineer , spoke to him in the lingua franca of the craft , and spent several dangerous and enjoyable hours in crawling through all manner of uncomfortable passages bored by human worms beneath the bed of the river . And this was Saturday , and here he was , at three o'clock in the afternoon , turning over in his mind the best way of sending on an expensive trip abroad a girl who had not the remotest notion of his existence . It was a whim , and a harmless one , and he excused it to his practical mind by the reflection that he was entitled to one day of extravagance after seven years of hard labor . For his own part , he was weary of mountains . He had wrought against one , frowning and stubborn as any Alp , and had not desisted until he reached its very heart with a four thousand foot lance .