You shouldn’t lie till ten. There’s the very prime of the morning gone long before that time. A person who has not done one-half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.
Nelly scolds with housekeeper wisdom: good days are built before noon. The ‘day’s work’ metaphor turns time into a ledger, showing her moral math—effort first, comfort second. Routine is her armor against the house’s storms. The advice lightly mocks Lockwood’s languor and city habits. Brontë uses Nelly’s voice to ground the novel’s tempests in ordinary discipline. It’s a small philosophy of agency in a house where passion often overruns duty.