midday
We talked in this manner through the early morning time , and later crept out of the bushes , and , after scanning the sky for Martians , hurried precipitately to the house on Putney Hill where he had made his lair . It was the coal cellar of the place , and when I saw the work he had spent a week upon -- it was a burrow scarcely ten yards long , which he designed to reach to the main drain on Putney Hill -- I had my first inkling of the gulf between his dreams and his powers . Such a hole I could have dug in a day . But I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that morning until past midday at his digging . We had a garden barrow and shot the earth we removed against the kitchen range . We refreshed ourselves with a tin of mock-turtle soup and wine from the neighbouring pantry . I found a curious relief from the aching strangeness of the world in this steady labour .