Mr.Pappleworth came at twenty minutes to three.

Then he sat and gossiped with Paul, treating the boy entirely as an equal, even in age.
In the afternoon there was never very much to do, unless it were near the week-end, and the accounts had to be made up.

At five o'clock all the men went down into the dungeon with the table on trestles, and there they had tea, eating bread-and-butter on the bare, dirty boards, talking with the same kind of ugly haste and slovenliness with which they ate their meal.

And yet upstairs the atmosphere among them was always jolly and clear.

The cellar and the trestles affected them.
After tea, when all the gases were lighted, WORK went more briskly.
There was the big evening post to get off.