twenty minutes before
twelve
` Damn your obstinacy , Tim Linkinwater , ' said brother Charles , looking at him without the faintest spark of anger , and with a countenance radiant with attachment to the old clerk . ` Damn your obstinacy , Tim Linkinwater , what do you mean , sir ? ' ` It 's forty-four year , ' said Tim , making a calculation in the air with his pen , and drawing an imaginary line before he cast it up , ` forty-four year , next May , since I first kept the books of Cheeryble , Brothers . I 've opened the safe every morning all that time -LRB- Sundays excepted -RRB- as the clock struck nine , and gone over the house every night at half-past ten -LRB- except on Foreign Post nights , and then twenty minutes before twelve -RRB- to see the doors fastened , and the fires out . I 've never slept out of the back-attic one single night . There 's the same mignonette box in the middle of the window , and the same four flower-pots , two on each side , that I brought with me when I first came . There a n't -- I 've said it again and again , and I 'll maintain it -- there a n't such a square as this in the world .