ten o'clock
Patsey had the very last Sunday quite made up his mind to be a missionary . Pearl took him into her mother 's room , and talked to him very seriously , but the best she could do with him was to get him to agree to be a drayman ; higher than that he would not go -- the fleshpots called him ! Jimmy became enamored of the railway and began to steal rides in box-cars , and once had been taken away and had to walk back five miles . It was ten o'clock when he got home , tired happy . He said he was `` hungry enough to eat raw dog , '' which is a vulgar expression for a little boy nine years old . Even Danny began to show signs of the contamination of the world , and came swaggering home one night feeling deliciously wicked smoking a liquorice pipe , and in reply to his mother 's shocked remonstrance had told her to `` cut it out . '' Those things had set Pearl thinking .