two o’clock in the afternoon
So , to our infinite relief on either side , we part friends after all . W. C. London : April 1883 The weary old nineteenth century had advanced into the last twenty years of its life . Towards two o'clock in the afternoon , Ovid Vere -LRB- of the Royal College of Surgeons -RRB- stood at the window of his consulting-room in London , looking out at the summer sunshine , and the quiet dusty street . He had received a warning , familiar to the busy men of our time -- the warning from overwrought Nature , which counsels rest after excessive work . With a prosperous career before him , he had been compelled -LRB- at only thirty-one years of age -RRB- to ask a colleague to take charge of his practice , and to give the brain which he had cruelly wearied a rest of some months to come . On the next day he had arranged to embark for the Mediterranean in a friend 's yacht .