seven o'clock
A quite new man is necessarily afraid of such a locality as Bloomsbury Square , for he has no chance of getting any one into his house if he do not live westward . Who would dine with Mr. Jones in Woburn Terrace , unless he had known Mr. Jones all his days , or unless Jones were known as a top sawyer in some walk of life ? But Mr. Prendergast was well enough known to his old friends to be allowed to live where he pleased , and he was not very anxious to add to their number by any new fashionable allurements . Herbert sent over to Bloomsbury Square to say that he would be there at seven o'clock , and then sat himself down in his new lodgings . It was but a dingy abode , consisting of a narrow sitting-room looking out into the big square from over a covered archway , and a narrower bedroom looking backwards into a dull , dirty-looking , crooked street . Nothing , he thought , could be more melancholy than such a home . But then what did it signify ?