nine o'clock at night
Clarissa looked at the two glittering circlets on her wedding finger . `` We can not starve while we have these , '' she thought ; and once in London , she could sell her drawings . Natural belief of the school-girl mind , that water-coloured sketches are a marketable commodity ! Again in the dismal early morning -- that sunrise of which poets write so sweetly , but which to the unromantic traveller is wont to seem a dreary thing -- mother and nurse and child went their way in a great black steamer , redolent of oil and boiled mutton ; and at nine o'clock at night -- a starless March night -- Clarissa and her belongings were deposited on St. Katharine 's Wharf , amidst a clamour and bustle that almost confused her senses . She had meditated and debated and puzzled herself all through the day 's voyage , sitting alone on the windy deck , brooding over her troubles , while Jane kept young Lovel amused and happy below . Inexperienced in the ways of every-day life as a child -- knowing no more now than she had known in her school-girl days at Belforêt -- she had made her poor little plan , such as it was . Two or three times during her London season she had driven through Soho -- those weird dreary streets between Soho Square and Regent Street -- and had contemplated the gloomy old houses , with a bill of lodgings to let here and there in a parlour-window ; anon a working jeweller 's humble shop breaking out of a private house ; here a cheap restaurant , there a French laundress ; everywhere the air of a life which is rather a struggle to live than actual living .