about a quarter past three
George Edmund thought him a very passive leadable parent indeed , less querulous about money matters and altogether much improved . The glitter and colour of these various entertainments reflected themselves upon the surface of that deep flood of meditation , hook-armed wooden-legged pirates , intelligent elephants , ingenious but extremely expensive toys , flickering processions , comic turns , snatches of popular music and George Edmund 's way of eating an orange , pictured themselves on his mind confusedly without in any way deflecting its course . Then on the fourth day he roused himself , gave George Edmund ten shillings to get himself a cutlet at the Café Royal and do the cinematographs round and about the West End , and so released reached Aleham in time for a temperate lunch . He chartered the Aleham car to take him to Black Strand and arrived there about a quarter past three , in a great effort to feel himself a matter-of-course visitor . It ought to be possible to record that Mr. Brumley 's mind was full of the intensest sense of Lady Harman during that journey and of nothing else , but as a matter of fact his mind was now curiously detached and reflective , the tensions and expectation of the past month and the astonishment of the last few days had worked themselves out and left him as it were the passive instrument of the purpose of his more impassioned moods . This distressed lover approached Black Strand in a condition of philosophical lassitude . The road from Aleham to Black Strand is a picturesque old English road , needlessly winding and badly graded , wriggling across a healthy wilderness with occasional pine-woods .