a
quarter to eleven
If I was one of them rich young chaps that can plank down the money for a half-year 's rent and a mahog ` ny suite , like I do for a packet of cigs. , you 'd be ready to get married , Carrie ? '' It was the first time they had seriously talked of marriage , though they had been `` going together '' ever since Caroline knew that a ` boy ' was as essential to her grown-up panoply as hairpins , and she felt something indefinable at the back of her mind which was not pleasure ; and yet it was not fear -- She turned from her own emotions with a sort of relief . `` Goodness ! There 's the church clock striking a quarter to eleven . We must have been three-quarters of an hour coming from the prom . here . I know Miss Ethel goes to bed at ten , and she 'll have been sitting up for me . ''