about six o’clock
For the next week he was very ill , but he did not allow this to interfere with his new work , which was easily learnt and not burdensome . He held this position for three years , and during that time important things happened . When he had recovered from his state of semi-starvation , and was living in comfort -LRB- a pound a week is a very large sum if you have previously had to live on ten shillings -RRB- , Reardon found that the impulse to literary production awoke in him more strongly than ever . He generally got home from the hospital about six o'clock , and the evening was his own . In this leisure time he wrote a novel in two volumes ; one publisher refused it , but a second offered to bring it out on the terms of half profits to the author . The book appeared , and was well spoken of in one or two papers ; but profits there were none to divide . In the third year of his clerkship he wrote a novel in three volumes ; for this his publishers gave him twenty-five pounds , with again a promise of half the profits after deduction of the sum advanced .