nine o'clock
`` So much the better , '' Captain Dave said bluntly . `` I like not these men that thump the pulpit and make as if they were about to jump out head foremost . However , I do n't suppose there is much harm in the lad , and it may be that his failure to look one in the face is not so much his fault as that of nature , which endowed him with a villainous squint . Well , let us turn in ; it is past nine o'clock , and high time to be a-bed . '' Cyril seemed to himself to have entered upon a new life when he stepped across the threshold of David Dowsett 's store . All his cares and anxieties had dropped from him . For the past two years he had lived the life of an automaton , starting early to his work , returning in the middle of the day to his dinner , -- to which as often as not he sat down alone , -- and spending his evenings in utter loneliness in the bare garret , where he was generally in bed long before his father returned .