a quarter to nine
In the daily strenuous life of a great hotel there are periods during which its bewildering activities slacken , and the vast organism seems to be under the influence of an opiate . Such a period recurs after dinner when the guests are preoccupied by the mysterious processes of digestion in the drawing-rooms or smoking-rooms or in the stalls of a theatre . On the evening of this nocturne the well-known circular entrance-hall of the Majestic , with its tessellated pavement , its malachite pillars , its Persian rugs , its lounges , and its renowned stuffed bears at the foot of the grand stairway , was for the moment deserted , save by the head hall-porter and the head night-porter and the girl in the bureau . It was a quarter to nine , and the head hall-porter was abdicating his pagoda to the head night-porter , and telling him the necessary secrets of the day . These two lords , before whom the motley panorama of human existence was continually being enrolled , held a portentous confabulation night and morning . They had no illusions ; they knew life . Shakespeare himself might have listened to them with advantage .