nine o'clock
`` I -- I 've got to wait over a few days to see to the packing and storing of my household effects , '' he said , briskly . Then he trudged up the hill . Sure enough , the packers appeared `` bright and early '' Monday morning , just as Buckley had said they would . By nine o'clock the house was upside down and by noon it was full of excelsior , tar paper , and crating materials . The rasp of the saw and the bang of the hammer resounded throughout the little cottage . Burly men dragged helpless and unresisting articles of furniture about as if they had a personal grudge against each separate piece , and pounded them , and drove nails into them , and mutilated them , and scratched them , and splintered them , and after they were completely conquered marked their pine board coffins with the name `` Nellie Duluth , '' after which they were ready for the fireproof graveyard in Harlem . Dazed and unsteady , Harvey watched the proceedings with the air of one who superintends .