nine o'clock
Mrs. Pettifer had very little patience to spare for the idiosyncrasies of her brother , though she owed him a good deal more than patience . For at the time , some twenty years before , when she had married Robert Pettifer , then merely a junior partner of the firm , Harold Hazlewood had alone stood by her . To the rest of the family she was throwing herself away ; to her brother Harold she was doing a fine thing , not because it was a fine thing but because it was an exceptional thing . Robert Pettifer however had prospered , and though he had reached an age when he might have claimed his leisure the nine o'clock train still took him daily to London . `` Aunt Margaret is n't after all so violent , '' said Dick , for whom she kept a very soft place in her heart . But Harold shook his head . `` Your aunt , Richard , has all the primeval ferocity of the average woman . ''