one o’clock
Shading her eyes with her fingers , she watched Mrs. Seal pull out one drawer after another in her search for some envelope or leaflet . She was tempted to drop her fingers and exclaim : `` Do sit down , Sally , and tell me how you manage it -- how you manage , that is , to bustle about with perfect confidence in the necessity of your own activities , which to me seem as futile as the buzzing of a belated blue-bottle . '' She said nothing of the kind , however , and the presence of industry which she preserved so long as Mrs. Seal was in the room served to set her brain in motion , so that she dispatched her morning 's work much as usual . At one o'clock she was surprised to find how efficiently she had dealt with the morning . As she put her hat on she determined to lunch at a shop in the Strand , so as to set that other piece of mechanism , her body , into action . With a brain working and a body working one could keep step with the crowd and never be found out for the hollow machine , lacking the essential thing , that one was conscious of being . She considered her case as she walked down the Charing Cross Road .