a quarter before nine
The space interposed between myself and them partook of that expansion , and our marshes were any distance off . That I could have been at our old church in my old church-going clothes , on the very last Sunday that ever was , seemed a combination of impossibilities , geographical and social , solar and lunar . Yet in the London streets so crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening , there were depressing hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor old kitchen at home so far away ; and in the dead of night , the footsteps of some incapable impostor of a porter mooning about Barnard 's Inn , under pretence of watching it , fell hollow on my heart . On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine , Herbert went to the counting-house to report himself , -- to look about him , too , I suppose , -- and I bore him company . He was to come away in an hour or two to attend me to Hammersmith , and I was to wait about for him . It appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were hatched were incubated in dust and heat , like the eggs of ostriches , judging from the places to which those incipient giants repaired on a Monday morning . Nor did the counting-house where Herbert assisted , show in my eyes as at all a good Observatory ; being a back second floor up a yard , of a grimy presence in all particulars , and with a look into another back second floor , rather than a look out .