ten o'clock
With no one to guide her choice , and restricted as she was in the matter of price , she sometimes made strange acquisitions . She avoided story books , and bought only such as seemed to her to contain solid matter -- history by preference , having learned from Gilbert that history was the best thing to study . Over these accumulating volumes she spent many a laborious hour . At first it was very hard to keep awake much after ten o'clock ; eyelids _ would _ grow so heavy , and the coil of golden hair -LRB- she no longer wore the long plait with the blue ribbon -RRB- seemed such a burden on the brain . But she strove with her drowsiness , and , like other students , soon made the grand discovery that , the fit once over , one is wider awake than ever . What hard , hard things she read ! ` Tytler 's Universal History , ' in one fat little small-typed volume , very much spoilt by rain , she made a vade-mecum ; the ` Annals of the Orient , of Greece , of Rome ' -- with difficulty not easily estimated she worked her way through them .