nine o'clock
He was on duty . '' `` You need n't stay here . '' `` I daresay not , '' he replied rather bitterly . `` But what I want to ask is this : Wo n't it be deucedly unpleasant for you three , when I report that you deliberately put my car out of commission so I could not get back by nine o'clock to register ? Of course , '' he went on , `` a box of tacks may have spilled itself on the road , but I never heard of a barbed wire fence trying to crawl across a road and getting run over , like a snake . '' I reported this to Tish , and I saw that she was uneasy , although she merely remarked that he still had two legs , and that she had not asked him to follow us . All she had set out to do was to see that he did n't get married before he registered , and she was doing that to the best of her ability .