two o'clock in the morning
Sometimes she drove about with him on his calls , or amused herself by making jellies in fancy moulds for his poor , or sat in his lap and discoursed like a bobolink of croup and measles , pulling his whiskers the while with her pink fingers . All this , as I have said , was before the first baby came . It is surprising what vague ideas young people in general , and young men in particular , have of the rubs and jars of domestic life ; especially domestic life on an income of eighteen hundred , American constitutions and country servants thrown in . Dr. Sharpe knew something of illness and babies and worry and watching ; but that his own individual baby should deliberately lie and scream till two o'clock in the morning , was a source of perpetual astonishment to him ; and that it , -- he and Mrs. Sharpe had their first quarrel over his persistence in calling the child an `` it , '' -- that it should _ invariably _ feel called upon to have the colic just as he had fallen into a nap , after a night spent with a dying patient , was a phenomenon of the infant mind for which he was , to say the least , unprepared . It was for a long time a mystery to his masculine understanding , that Biddy could not be nursery-maid as well as cook . `` Why , what has she to do now ? Nothing but to broil steaks and make tea for two people ! ''