twelve o’clock
The staircase was sacred to rabbits . There in hutches of all shapes and kinds , made from old packing-cases , boxes , drawers , and tea-chests , they increased in a prodigious degree , and contributed their share towards that complicated whiff which , quite impartially , and without distinction of persons , saluted every nose that was put into Sweedlepipe 's easy shaving-shop . Many noses found their way there , for all that , especially on Sunday morning , before church-time . Even archbishops shave , or must be shaved , on a Sunday , and beards WILL grow after twelve o'clock on Saturday night , though it be upon the chins of base mechanics ; who , not being able to engage their valets by the quarter , hire them by the job , and pay them -- oh , the wickedness of copper coin ! -- in dirty pence . Poll Sweedlepipe , the sinner , shaved all comers at a penny each , and cut the hair of any customer for twopence ; and being a lone unmarried man , and having some connection in the bird line , Poll got on tolerably well . He was a little elderly man , with a clammy cold right hand , from which even rabbits and birds could not remove the smell of shaving-soap .