ten o'clock
But that was a year in the past . Bud had cabin fever now and did not know what ailed him , though cause might have been summed up in two meaty phrases : too much idleness , and too much mother-in-law . Also , not enough comfort and not enough love . In the kitchen of the little green cottage on North Sixth Street where Bud had built the home nest with much nearly-Mission furniture and a piano , Bud was frying his own hotcakes for his ten o'clock breakfast , and was scowling over the task . He did not mind the hour so much , but he did mortally hate to cook his own breakfast -- or any other meal , for that matter . In the next room a rocking chair was rocking with a rhythmic squeak , and a baby was squalling with that sustained volume of sound which never fails to fill the adult listener with amazement . It affected Bud unpleasantly , just as the incessant bawling of a band of weaning calves used to do .