ten o'clock in the morning
For the moderns were futile ; painting the least respectable of the arts ; and why read anything but Marlowe and Shakespeare , Jacob said , and Fielding if you must read novels ? `` Fielding , '' said Fanny , when the man in Charing Cross Road asked her what book she wanted . She bought Tom Jones . At ten o'clock in the morning , in a room which she shared with a school teacher , Fanny Elmer read Tom Jones -- that mystic book . For this dull stuff -LRB- Fanny thought -RRB- about people with odd names is what Jacob likes . Good people like it . Dowdy women who do n't mind how they cross their legs read Tom Jones -- a mystic book ; for there is something , Fanny thought , about books which if I had been educated I could have liked -- much better than ear-rings and flowers , she sighed , thinking of the corridors at the Slade and the fancy-dress dance next week .