ten o'clock in the evening
Visiting among the outside scholars was forbidden , and the girls studying for graduation had their hours more to themselves than they would have had in the school . Special chums were able to keep together in most instances . Ruth , Helen and Ann Hicks went to live at Mrs. Sadoc Smith 's ; and there was room in the huge front room on the second floor of her rambling old house , for Mercy , too , had it been wise for the lame girl to lodge so far from the school . Mrs. Smith got the girls up in season in the morning to reach the dining hall at Briarwood by breakfast-time ; and she saw to it , likewise , that their light went out at ten o'clock in the evening . These were her instructions from Mrs. Tellingham , and Mrs. Sadoc Smith was rather a grim person , who did her duty and obeyed the law . There being an extra couch , Ruth persuaded her friends to agree to the coming of a fourth girl into the lodging . And this fourth girl , oddly enough , was not one of the graduating class , or even one of the girls whom they had chummed with before .