nearly
midnight
`` I never said onybody cud learn a ' o ' themsel 's , wantin ' help , ye ken . There 's nae mony laddies cud du that , an ' feower still wad try . '' They sat down together at the table , and in half an hour or so , Aggie had begun to see the faint light of at least the false dawn , as they call it , through the thickets of algebra . It was nearly midnight when Cosmo rose , and then Aggie would not let him go alone , but insisted on accompanying him to the gate of the court . It was a curious relation between the two . While Agnes looked up to Cosmo , about two years her junior , as immeasurably her superior in all that pertained to the intellect and its range , she assumed over him a sort of general human superiority , something like that a mother will assert over the most gifted of sons . One has seen , with a kind of sacred amusement , the high priest of many literary and artistic circles , set down with rebuke by his mother , as if he had been still a boy !