one o'clock
But very frequently all she could do in the morning , after her late sitting up at night , was to run with the work home , and receive the money from the person for whom it was done . She could not stay often to make purchases of food , but gave up the money at once to her father 's eager clutch ; sometimes prompted by savage hunger it is true , but more frequently by a craving for opium . On the whole he was not so hungry as his daughter . For it was a long fast from the one o'clock dinner-hour at Miss Simmonds ' to the close of Mary 's vigil , which was often extended to midnight . She was young , and had not yet learned to bear `` clemming . '' One evening , as she sang a merry song over her work , stopping occasionally to sigh , the blind Margaret came groping in . It had been one of Mary 's additional sorrows that her friend had been absent from home , accompanying the lecturer on music in his round among the manufacturing towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire .