nine o'clock
The bottle stood on the table on a silver stand with ice round it . The fact was that the host , a privy councillor called Stepan Nikiforovitch Nikiforov , an old bachelor of sixty-five , was celebrating his removal into a house he had just bought , and as it happened , also his birthday , which he had never kept before . The festivity , however , was not on a very grand scale ; as we have seen already , there were only two guests , both of them former colleagues and former subordinates of Mr. Nikiforov ; that is , an actual civil councillor called Semyon Ivanovitch Shipulenko , and another actual civil councillor , Ivan Ilyitch Pralinsky . They had arrived to tea at nine o'clock , then had begun upon the wine , and knew that at exactly half-past eleven they would have to set off home . Their host had all his life been fond of regularity . A few words about him . He had begun his career as a petty clerk with nothing to back him , had quietly plodded on for forty-five years , knew very well what to work towards , had no ambition to draw the stars down from heaven , though he had two stars already , and particularly disliked expressing his own opinion on any subject .