nine o'clock
`` Then ai n't I a lucky little boy ? '' I asked . For hitherto it had been Mrs. Fursey 's method to impress upon me my exceptional good fortune . That I could and did , involuntarily , retire to bed at six , while less happily placed children were deprived of their natural rest until eight or nine o'clock , had always been held up to me as an astounding piece of luck . Some little boys had not a bed at all ; for the which , in my more riotous moments , I envied them . Again , that at the first sign of a cold it became my unavoidable privilege to lunch off linseed gruel and sup off brimstone and treacle -- a compound named with deliberate intent to deceive the innocent , the treacle , so far as taste is concerned , being wickedly subordinated to the brimstone -- was another example of Fortune 's favouritism : other little boys were so astoundingly unlucky as to be left alone when they felt ill . If further proof were needed to convince that I had been signalled out by Providence as its especial protege , there remained always the circumstance that I possessed Mrs. Fursey for my nurse .