seven
o'clock
The pack proved to have resisted the elements , and a suit of clothes and slippers were provided by the house . Dickson , after a glass of toddy , wallowed in a hot bath , which washed all the stiffness out of him . He had a fire in his bedroom , beside which he wrote the opening passages of that diary he had vowed to keep , descanting lyrically upon the joys of ill weather . At seven o'clock , warm and satisfied in soul , and with his body clad in raiment several sizes too large for it , he descended to dinner . At one end of the long table in the dining-room sat a group of anglers . They looked jovial fellows , and Dickson would fain have joined them ; but , having been fishing all day in the Loch o ' the Threshes , they were talking their own talk , and he feared that his admiration for Izaak Walton did not qualify him to butt into the erudite discussions of fishermen . The landlord seemed to think likewise , for he drew back a chair for him at the other end , where sat a young man absorbed in a book .