ten o'clock
He remembered now how he had stood on this same spot , and stared with fascinated gaze at this quadrangle of dull houses , and pondered upon what it must feel like to be a Rothschild -- and that was only a little over a year ago ! There was no sense of fascination whatever in his present gaze . He found himself regarding instead , with a kind of detached curiosity , the little knot of men in frock-coats and silk-hats who stood talking in the doorway . It was barely ten o'clock , yet clearly business was proceeding within . One of these persons whom he beheld might be a Rothschild , for aught he knew ; at any rate , it was presumable that some of them were on the premises . He had heard it said that the very head of the house listened to quotations from the tape while he ate his luncheon , and interrupted his conversations with the most important of non-commercial callers , to make or refuse bargains in shares offered by brokers who came in . What impulse lay behind this extraordinary devotion to labour ?