one o'clock
`` Seein ' it 's the first time me and you set up together , I mebbe better not stay just so late , '' Absalom had explained when , after three hours ' courting , he had reluctantly risen to take his leave , under the firm conviction , as Tillie plainly saw , that she felt as sorry to have him go as evidently he was to part from her ! `` How late , '' thought Tillie , `` will he stay the SECOND time he sits up with me ? And what , '' she wondered , `` do other girls see in it ? '' The following Sunday night , Absalom came again , and this time he stayed until one o'clock , with the result that on the following Monday morning Tillie overslept herself and was one hour late in starting the washing . It was that evening , after supper , while Mrs. Getz was helping her husband make his toilet for a meeting of the School Board -- at which the application of that suspicious character , the Harvard graduate , was to be considered -- that the husband and wife discussed these significant Sunday night visits . Mrs. Getz opened up the subject while she performed the wifely office of washing her husband 's neck , his increasing bulk making that duty a rather difficult one for him . Standing over him as he sat in a chair in the kitchen , holding on his knees a tin basin full of soapy water , she scrubbed his fat , sunburned neck with all the vigor and enthusiasm that she would have applied to the cleaning of the kitchen porch or the scouring of an iron skillet .