nine o'clock
At ten she puts them to bed . Afterwards , `` the good Bunce '' -- who is fifty , looks like a grenadier , and wears a large mole on her chin -- takes up a French novel , fastened by a piece of elastic between the covers of Baxter 's `` Saint 's Rest , '' and reads for an hour before retiring . Her pay is fifty-two pounds a year , and her attachment to the Misses Lefanu a matter of inference rather than perception . One morning in last May , at nine o'clock , when Miss Bunce had just arranged the pair in front of their breakfast-plates , and was sitting down to pour out the tea , two singers came down the street , and their voices -- a man 's and a woman 's -- though not young , accorded very prettily : -- `` Citizens , toss your pens away ! For all the world is mad to-day -- Cuckoo -- cuckoo ! The world is mad to-day . '' `` What unusual words for a pair of street singers ! ''