midnight
The good Sisters of the Society of the Broken Heart had taught Dolores to sing beautifully , to play upon the piano and the guitar , to embroider , to paint mauve roses on pink tambourines and many other useful arts , graces and accomplishments -- but they had not taught her _ practical _ morality nor anything of cooking , marketing , plain sewing , house-cleaning or anything else of house-keeping . However , having been bred as I had been bred , I could take the form and let the substance go , accept the shapely husks and shout not for the grain , and prefer a pretty song , and a rose in black hair over a shell-like ear , to a square meal . I fear the average Sergeant-Major would have beaten Dolores within a week of matrimony , but I strove to make loss , discomfort , and disappointment a discipline , -- and music , silk dresses and daintiness an aesthetic re-training to a barrack-blunted mind . In justice to Dolores I should make it clear that she was not of the slatternly , dirty , lazy , half-breed type that pigs in a _ peignoir _ from twelve to twelve and snores again from midnight to midday . She was trim and dainty , used good perfume or none , rose early and went in the garden , loathed cheap and showy trash whether in dress , jewellery , or furniture ; and was incapable of wearing fine shoes over holey stockings or a silk gown over dirty linen . No -- there was nothing to offend the fastidious about Dolores , but there was everything to offend the good house-keeper and the moralist . Frequently she would provide no dinner in order that we might be compelled to dine in public at a restaurant or a hotel , a thing she loved to do , and she would often send out for costly sweets and pastry , drink champagne -LRB- very moderately , I admit -RRB- , and generally behave as though she were the wife of a man of means .