midnight
A tutor must be called in at once . So the grasshoppers , having money , sought out and quickly purchased the ant . Closeted with Oscar and his notes , they had , as Bertie put it , salted down the early Greek bucks by seven on Monday evening . By the same midnight they had , as Billy expressed it , called the turn on Plato . Tuesday was a second day of concentrated swallowing . Oscar had taken them through the thought of many centuries . There had been intermissions for lunch and dinner only ; and the weather was exceedingly hot .