four o'clock
It was Sunday -- and therefore John Bruce , the Engineering College Professor , was exceptionally busy . On a-week-day he only had to deliver his carefully prepared lectures , interview students , read and return essays , take the chair at meetings of college societies , coach one or two `` specialists , '' superintend the games on the college gymkhana ground , interview seekers after truth and perverters of the same , write letters on various matters of college business , visit the hostel , set question papers and correct answers , attend common-room meetings , write articles for the college magazine and papers for the Scientific , Philosophical , Shakespearean , Mathematical , Debating , Literary , Historical , Students ' , Old Boys ' , or some other `` union '' and , if God willed , get a little exercise and private study at his beloved `` subject '' and invention , before preparing for the morrow . On Sundays , the thousand and one things crowded out of the programme were to be cleared up , his home mail was to be written , and then arrears of work had to be attacked . At four o'clock he addressed Roy Pittenweem and Mrs. MacDougall , his dogs , and said : -- `` There 's a bloomin ' bun-snatch somewhere , you fellers , do n't it ? '' . Though a Professor and one of the most keen and earnest workmen in India , his own college blazers were not quite worn out , and Life , the great Artist , had not yet done much sketching on the canvas of his face -- in spite of his daily contact with the Science Professor , William Greatorex Bonnett , B.A. , widely known as the Mad Hatter , the greatest of whose many great achievements is his avoidance of death at the hands of his colleagues and acquaintance . Receiving no reply beyond a wink and a waggle , he dropped his blue pencil , rose , and went to the table sacred to litter ; and from a wild welter of books , pipes , papers , golf-balls , hats , cigar-boxes , dog-collars , switches , cartridges and other sediment , he extracted a large gilt-edged card and studied it without enthusiasm or bias .