It was already half past twelve.
"My friend Basil Grant," I said, "is the best man we can go to.

He and I were to have gone to the same dinner tonight; but he will just have come back by now.

Have you any objection to taking a cab ?" "Not at all," he replied, rising politely, and gathering up his absurd plaid shawl.
A rattle in a hansom brought us underneath the sombre pile of workmen's flats in Lambeth which Grant inhabited; a climb up a wearisome wooden staircase brought us to his garret.

When I entered that wooden and scrappy interior, the white gleam of Basil's shirt-front and the lustre of his fur coat flung on the wooden settle, struck me as a contrast.

He was drinking a glass of wine before retiring.