half past ten
`` Have to , to let the editor come to Carlsbad , '' Stoller said , with a return to the sourness of his earlier mood . `` I do n't know as I care much for his looks ; I seen him when he came in with you . No snap to him . '' He clicked shut the penknife he had been paring his nails with , and started up with the abruptness which marked all his motions , mental and physical ; as he walked heavily out of the room he said , without looking at Burnamy , `` You want to be ready by half past ten at the latest . '' Stoller 's father and mother were poor emigrants who made their way to the West with the instinct for sordid prosperity native to their race and class ; and they set up a small butcher shop in the little Indiana town where their son was born , and throve in it from the start . He could remember his mother helping his father make the sausage and head-cheese and pickle the pigs ' feet , which they took turns in selling at as great a price as they could extort from the townspeople . She was a good and tender mother , and when her little Yawcup , as the boys called Jacob in mimicry after her , had grown to the school-going age , she taught him to fight the Americans , who stoned him when he came out of his gate , and mobbed his home-coming ; and mocked and tormented him at play-time till they wore themselves into a kindlier mind toward him through the exhaustion of their invention .