ten o'clock
Occasionally , Mr Peters , the minister , would ask me home to tea after the second service . I dreaded the honour , for I usually sate on the edge of my chair all the evening , and answered solemn questions , put in a deep bass voice , until household prayer-time came , at eight o'clock , when Mrs Peters came in , smoothing down her apron , and the maid-of-all-work followed , and first a sermon , and then a chapter was read , and a long impromptu prayer followed , till some instinct told Mr Peters that supper-time had come , and we rose from our knees with hunger for our predominant feeling . Over supper the minister did unbend a little into one or two ponderous jokes , as if to show me that ministers were men , after all . And then at ten o'clock I went home , and enjoyed my long-repressed yawns in the three-cornered room before going to bed . Dinah and Hannah Dawson , so their names were put on the board above the shop-door -- I always called them Miss Dawson and Miss Hannah -- considered these visits of mine to Mr Peters as the greatest honour a young man could have ; and evidently thought that if after such privileges , I did not work out my salvation , I was a sort of modern Judas Iscariot . On the contrary , they shook their heads over my intercourse with Mr Holdsworth . He had been so kind to me in many ways , that when I cut into my ham , I hovered over the thought of asking him to tea in my room , more especially as the annual fair was being held in Eltham market-place , and the sight of the booths , the merry-go-rounds , the wild-beast shows , and such country pomps , was -LRB- as I thought at seventeen -RRB- very attractive .