nine o'clock
How often had her story-paper been snatched from her when she was a girl , and a sock to knit thrust in her hand , with the bidding to be about something useful . How she had hated it . But now that she was free she still had a better conscience when she knit . To the click of her long wooden needles she thought , with more pleasure than was afforded by any other vision at the moment , of a hot water bottle gently warming the bed into which she meant to creep at exactly nine o'clock . This hour she had set when at eight already the temptation to go to bed and forget the unsatisfactory day in sound warm slumbers had been so strong as to make yielding to it appear wrong . These vestiges of Puritanism Aurora did not recognize as such , but yet her mind as she was practicing self-discipline turned , without seeking for the reason , toward the person who had done most to inculcate in her the doctrine that if you like to do a thing that itself is almost surely a sign of the thing being wicked , and that if you dislike it it is very probably your duty . While she continued to appear the signora to whom the servants ' eyes were accustomed , albeit a trifle more absent and unsmiling , she was to herself a young girl in a far country , living and moving in scenes of difficulty and misunderstanding with a sharp-chinned , narrow-chested , timidly-beloved just woman -- her mother , long since laid to rest ... .