about nine
o'clock
I thought , mournfully . I breakfasted by myself the following morning , in a room called the speisesaal . I found I was late . When I came into the room , about nine o'clock , there was no one but myself to be seen . There was a long table with a white cloth upon it , and rows of the thickest cups and saucers it had ever been my fate to see , with distinct evidences that the chief part of the company had already breakfasted . Baskets full of _ Brödchen _ and pots of butter , a long India-rubber pipe coming from the gas to light a theemaschine -- lots of cane-bottomed chairs , an open piano , two cages with canaries in them ; the kettle gently simmering above the gas-flame ; for the rest , silence and solitude . I sat down , having found a clean cup and plate , and glanced timidly at the theemaschine , not daring to cope with its mysteries , until my doubts were relieved by the entrance of a young person with a trim little figure , a coquettishly cut and elaborately braided apron , and a white frilled morgenhaube upon her hair , surmounting her round , heavenward-aspiring visage . ''