midday
She was a year or two older than he , though the thought never occurred to him . The loan of _ News from Nowhere _ was the beginning of a series of cross loans . Upon some absurd first principle of his , Hill had never `` wasted time '' Upon poetry , and it seemed an appalling deficiency to her . One day in the lunch hour , when she chanced upon him alone in the little museum where the skeletons were arranged , shamefully eating the bun that constituted his midday meal , she retreated , and returned to lend him , with a slightly furtive air , a volume of Browning . He stood sideways towards her and took the book rather clumsily , because he was holding the bun in the other hand . And in the retrospect his voice lacked the cheerful clearness he could have wished . That occurred after the examination in comparative anatomy , on the day before the College turned out its students , and was carefully locked up by the officials , for the Christmas holidays .