about nine o'clock
David thought a minute , lifted out of himself for the first time . ` Shall I come to-night to see him ? ' ` Oh do ! ' she said eagerly ; ` come about nine o'clock . I will tell him -- perhaps that will keep him in . ' Then she went into more details than she had yet done ; named the creditors who were pressing ; told how her church-work , though she worked herself blind night and day , could do but little for them ; how both the restaurant and the reading-room were emptying , and she could now get no servants to stay , but Sarah , because of her father 's temper . It seemed to him as he listened that the story , with its sickened hope and on-coming fate , was all in some strange way familiar ; it or something like it was to have been expected ; for him the strange and jarring thing now would have been to find a happy person .