ten o'clock
`` Well , '' I said , `` three guineas , which I shall have over , will buy me a couple of pairs of what-d'ye-call - 'em s ; '' of which , _ entre nous _ , I was in great want , having just then done growing , whereas my pantaloons were made a good eighteen months before . Well , I walked down the village , my hands in my breeches pockets ; I had poor Mary 's purse there , having removed the little things which she gave me the day before , and placed them -- never mind where : but look you , in those days I had a heart , and a warm one too . I had Mary 's purse ready for my aunt 's donation , which never came , and with my own little stock of money besides , that Mrs. Hoggarty 's card parties had lessened by a good five-and-twenty shillings , I calculated that , after paying my fare , I should get to town with a couple of seven-shilling pieces in my pocket . I walked down the village at a deuce of a pace ; so quick that , if the thing had been possible , I should have overtaken ten o'clock that had passed by me two hours ago , when I was listening to Mrs. H. 's long stories over her terrible Rosolio . The truth is , at ten I had an appointment under a certain person 's window , who was to have been looking at the moon at that hour , with her pretty quilled nightcap on , and her blessed hair in papers . There was the window shut , and not so much as a candle in it ; and though I hemmed and hawed , and whistled over the garden paling , and sang a song of which Somebody was very fond , and even threw a pebble at the window , which hit it exactly at the opening of the lattice , -- I woke no one except a great brute of a house-dog , that yelled , and howled , and bounced so at me over the rails , that I thought every moment he would have had my nose between his teeth . So I was obliged to go off as quickly as might be ; and the next morning Mamma and my sisters made breakfast for me at four , and at five came the `` True Blue '' light six-inside post-coach to London , and I got up on the roof without having seen Mary Smith .