half past ten
I did n't get any farther than the skin of his face and you wo n't , either . He has promised to come over , and when you have rubbed up against him for half an hour , as I did this morning , you will think as I do . '' Since that time , Felix had spent many comforting hours in Kelsey 's little back room . Sometimes he would drop in about nine and remain until half past ten ; at other times , it would be nearer midnight before he would turn the knob . As for the shop itself , nothing up and down `` The Avenue '' was quite as odd , quite as ramshackly , or quite as picturesque . What the public saw , on either side of the down-two-steps entrance , was a bench with slanting shelves , holding a double row of books and two patched glass windows , protecting disordered heaps of prints , stained engravings , and old etchings , the whole embedded in dust . What the owner 's intimates saw , once they got inside and continued to the end of the building , was a low-ceiled room warmed by an old-fashioned Franklin stove and lighted by a drop covered by a green shade .