six o'clock in May
Forest King never failed me yet ; he is as full of running as a Derby winner , and he 'll go over the yawners like a bird , '' thought Cecil , who never confronted his troubles with more than sixty seconds ' thought , and who was of that light , impassible , half-levity , half-languor of temperament that both throws off worry easily and shirks it persistently . `` Sufficient for the day , '' etc. , was the essence of his creed ; and if he had enough to lay a fiver at night on the rubber , he was quite able to forget for the time that he wanted five hundred for settling-day in the morning , and had not an idea how to get it . There was not a trace of anxiety on him when he opened a low arched door , passed down a corridor , and entered the warm , full light of that chamber of liberty , that sanctuary of the persecuted , that temple of refuge , thrice blessed in all its forms throughout the land , that consecrated Mecca of every true believer in the divinity of the meerschaum , and the paradise of the nargile -- the smoking-room . A spacious , easy chamber , too ; lined with the laziest of divans , seen just now through a fog of smoke , and tenanted by nearly a score of men in every imaginable loose velvet costume , and with faces as well known in the Park at six o'clock in May , and on the Heath in October ; in Paris in January , and on the Solent in August ; in Pratt 's of a summer 's night , and on the Moors in an autumn morning , as though they were features that came round as regularly as the `` July '' or the Waterloo Cup . Some were puffing away in calm , meditative comfort , in silence that they would not have broken for any earthly consideration ; others were talking hard and fast , and through the air heavily weighted with the varieties of tobacco , from tiny cigarettes to giant cheroots , from rough bowls full of cavendish to sybaritic rose-water hookahs , a Babel of sentences rose together : `` Gave him too much riding , the idiot . '' `` Take the field , bar one . '' `` Nothing so good for the mare as a little niter and antimony in her mash . ''