five o'clock
The dear woman smiled , but did not answer my exclamation . Thus , without travelling , I travel , and share the emotions of those I do not know . But sometimes the old longing comes over me as in the days when I timidly touched the huge East Indiaman , and magnetically sailed around the world . It was but a few days after the lovers and I waved farewell to the steamer , and while the lovely figures standing under the great gonfalon were as vivid in my mind as ever , that a day of premature sunny sadness , like those of the Indian summer , drew me away from the office early in the afternoon : for fortunately it is our dull season now , and even Titbottom sometimes leaves the office by five o'clock . Although why he should leave it , or where he goes , or what he does , I do not well know . Before I knew him , I used sometimes to meet him with a man whom I was afterwards told was Bartleby , the scrivener . Even then it seemed to me that they rather clubbed their loneliness than made society for each other .