one o'clock
It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself compared with him . Yesterday afternoon set in misty and cold . I had half a mind to spend it by my study fire , instead of wading through heath and mud to Wuthering Heights . On coming up from dinner , however , -LRB- N.B. -- I dine between twelve and one o'clock ; the housekeeper , a matronly lady , taken as a fixture along with the house , could not , or would not , comprehend my request that I might be served at five -RRB- -- on mounting the stairs with this lazy intention , and stepping into the room , I saw a servant-girl on her knees surrounded by brushes and coal-scuttles , and raising an infernal dust as she extinguished the flames with heaps of cinders . This spectacle drove me back immediately ; I took my hat , and , after a four-miles ' walk , arrived at Heathcliff 's garden-gate just in time to escape the first feathery flakes of a snow-shower . On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost , and the air made me shiver through every limb . Being unable to remove the chain , I jumped over , and , running up the flagged causeway bordered with straggling gooseberry-bushes , knocked vainly for admittance , till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled .