five o'clock
So , after a time , he settled down contentedly in his London chambers with his books about him , and presently found that glow of labour stealing over him which is at once the stimulus and the reward of every true son of knowledge . His book reconciled him to life again , and soon he was as often seen in the common haunts of London society as before . He dined out , he went to the theatre , he frequented his club like other men , and every year he spent three of the winter months in Paris , living in the best French world , talking as he never talked in London , and cultivating , whether in the theatre or in the _ salons _ of his sister 's friends or in the studios of some of the more eminent of French artists , a fastidious critical temper , which was rapidly becoming more and more exacting , more and more master of the man . Now , on this May afternoon , as he settled himself down to his work , it would have given any of those who liked Eustace Kendal -- and they were many -- pleasure to see how the look of fatigue with which he had returned from his round of the Academy faded away , how he shook back the tumbling gray locks from his eyes with the zest and the eagerness of one setting forth to battle , and how , as time passed on and the shadows deepened on the white spire opposite , the contentment of successful labour showed itself in the slow unconscious caress which fell upon the back of the sleeping cat curled up in the chair beside him , or in the absent but still kindly smile with which he greeted the punctual entrance of the servant , who at five o'clock came to put tea and the evening paper beside him and to make up the fire , which crackled on with cheery companionable sounds through the lamp-lit evening and far into the night . Two or three days afterwards , Kendal , in looking over his engagement-book , in which the entries were methodically kept , noticed ` Afternoon tea , Mrs. Stuart 's , Friday , ' and at once sent off a note to Edward Wallace , suggesting that they should go to the theatre together on Thursday evening to see Miss Bretherton , ` for , as you will see , ' he wrote , ` it will be impossible for me to meet her with a good conscience unless I have done my duty beforehand by going to see her perform . ' To this the American replied by a counter proposal . ` Miss Bretherton , ' he wrote , ` offers my sister and myself a box for Friday night ; it will hold four or five ; you must certainly be of the party , and I shall ask Forbes . '