noon
`` I am as good as ever I was . '' Then he considered , and rightly , that it was not his own just estimate of himself which was to be taken into consideration in a case of this sort , but that of the people . He realized that a girl brought up as Charlotte Carroll had been might , knowing , as she must finally know , her own father to be little better than a common swindler , not even dream of the possibility of marrying a grocer . He had to pass his old office on his way home to dinner that noon , and he looked at it with more regret than he had ever done since leaving it . The school was out and the children were streaming along the street . The air was full of their chatter . Henry Edgecomb came up behind him with a good-morning .