eight
o'clock
I am as sorry as any man to see folk fighting the wrong people and the wrong things , but I 'd a deal sooner see them doing that than that they should have no fight in them . So having recorded , and being about to record , my hero 's fights of all sorts , with all sorts of enemies , I shall now proceed to give an account of his passage-at-arms with the only one of his school-fellows whom he ever had to encounter in this manner . It was drawing towards the close of Arthur 's first half-year , and the May evenings were lengthening out . Locking-up was not till eight o'clock , and everybody was beginning to talk about what he would do in the holidays . The shell , in which form all our dramatis personae now are , were reading , amongst other things , the last book of Homer 's `` Iliad , '' and had worked through it as far as the speeches of the women over Hector 's body . It is a whole school-day , and four or five of the School-house boys -LRB- amongst whom are Arthur , Tom , and East -RRB- are preparing third lesson together . They have finished the regulation forty lines , and are for the most part getting very tired , notwithstanding the exquisite pathos of Helen 's lamentation .