eight o'clock
The Scorpions were to meet at eight o'clock and before that hour Kenneth Forbes had to finish the first chapter of a serial story . The literary society , named in accordance with the grotesque whim of Oxford undergraduates , consisted of eight members , and it was proposed that each one should contribute a chapter . Forbes was of a fertile wit , and he had been nominated the first operator . He had been allowed the whole Christmas vacation to prepare his opening chapter ; which was why on this first Sunday of term while the rest of Merton College was at dinner in hall , he sat at his desk desperately driving his pen across the paper .