five o'clock
`` Yes , you too have been in Arcadia , '' we seem not too grumpily to allow . When I pass the house in Mansfield Street I remember that Arcadia was there . I do n't know who has it now , and do n't want to know ; it 's enough to be so sure that if I should ring the bell there would be no such luck for me as that Brooksmith should open the door . Mr. Offord , the most agreeable , the most attaching of bachelors , was a retired diplomatist , living on his pension and on something of his own over and above ; a good deal confined , by his infirmities , to his fireside and delighted to be found there any afternoon in the year , from five o'clock on , by such visitors as Brooksmith allowed to come up . Brooksmith was his butler and his most intimate friend , to whom we all stood , or I should say sat , in the same relation in which the subject of the sovereign finds himself to the prime minister . By having been for years , in foreign lands , the most delightful Englishman any one had ever known , Mr. Offord had in my opinion rendered signal service to his country . But I suppose he had been too much liked -- liked even by those who did n't like IT -- so that as people of that sort never get titles or dotations for the horrid things they 've NOT done , his principal reward was simply that we went to see him .