ten o'clock
In the middle of the night Jael came into my room , and sat down on my bed 's foot , looking at me . I had been dreaming strangely , about my own childish days , and about my father and mother when we were young . What Jael told me -- by slow degrees , and as tenderly as when she was my nurse years ago -- seemed at first so unreal as to be like a part of the dream . At ten o'clock , when she had locked up the house , she had come as usual to the parlour door , to tell my father it was bed-time . He did not answer , being sitting with his back to the door , apparently busy writing . So she went away . Half an hour afterwards she came again .