four o'clock
This touched the son , but Saville laughed him out of the twinge of good feeling ; and very shortly afterwards , Percy Godolphin was gazetted as a cornet in the -- Life-Guards . The life of a soldier , in peace , is indolent enough , Heaven knows ! Percy liked the new uniforms and the new horses -- all of which were bought on credit . He liked his new companions ; he liked balls ; he liked flirting ; he did not dislike Hyde Park from four o'clock till six ; and he was not very much bored by drills and parade . It was much to his credit in the world that he was the protege of a man who had so great a character for profligacy and gambling as Augustus Saville ; and under such auspices he found himsef launched at once into the full tide of `` good society . '' Young , romantic , high-spirited -- with the classic features of an Antinous , and a very pretty knack of complimenting and writing verses -- Percy Godolphin soon became , while yet more fit in years for the nursery than the world , `` the curled darling '' of that wide class of high-born women who have nothing to do but to hear love made to them , and who , all artifice themselves , think the love sweetest which srings from the most natural source . They like boyhood when it is not bashful ; and from sixteen to twenty , a Juan need scarcely go to Seville to find a Julia .