six o’clock
sighed the curate 's mother , `` if you were as old as I am , young gentleman , you would n't feel quite so sure of the enjoyment of the day ! '' So , in rebuke of the rashness of youth , spoke the caution of age . The negative view is notoriously the safe view , all the world over , and the Pentecost philosophy is , as a necessary consequence , generally in the right . It was close on six o'clock when Allan and his friends left the boat , and the evening influence was creeping already , in its mystery and its stillness , over the watery solitude of the Broads . The shore in these wild regions was not like the shore elsewhere . Firm as it looked , the garden ground in front of the reed-cutter 's cottage was floating ground , that rose and fell and oozed into puddles under the pressure of the foot . The boatmen who guided the visitors warned them to keep to the path , and pointed through gaps in the reeds and pollards to grassy places , on which strangers would have walked confidently , where the crust of earth was not strong enough to bear the weight of a child over the unfathomed depths of slime and water beneath .