six o'clock
The warning could be delivered in less than a minute , and she fancied that Alton would not be alone , while she knew that the conventionalities as understood in England are almost unknown in the West . As it happened Alton , who , though Miss Townshead did not know this , lived in the room adjoining his office , was busy about the stove just then . In those days , when Vancouver had more inhabitants than it could well find room for and its hotels overflowed , single men taking their meals in the public restaurants lived as best they could , over their stores and offices , or in rude cabins and shanties flung up anywhere on the outskirts of the city , while it is not improbable that a good many of them live in much the same fashion now . Alton had , however , missed the six o'clock supper , for reasons which the sheaf of papers on his desk made plain , and was then engaged in cooking something in a frying-pan . A portable cedar partition partly shrouded the little table set out with a few plates , and the stove , while his old worked-deerhide slippers and loose jacket indicated that the man was just then not so much in his place of business as at home . He had been busy in the city and at his desk for ten hours that day , for the Somasco products were becoming known , and men had been toiling in the valley , driving roads , and building a new sawmill in the frost and snow . Part of Alton 's business in the city was to raise the money that was needed to maintain them , and already he could foresee that if the time of prosperity was delayed it might go hardly with the Somasco Company .