one o’clock
were heard over the wall , sometimes with tumultuous voices that seemed to enhance her loneliness , as she sat on the floor , hour after hour , sifting out the entire shells , and feeling a languid pleasure in joining the two halves of a bivalve , especially those lovely sunset shells that have rosy rays diverging from their crimson hinge over their polished surface , white , or just tinted with the hues of a daffodil sky . She never clasped a pair together without a little half-uttered ejaculation , `` Oh , bring me and my dear young love thus together again ! '' And when she found a couple making a perfect heart , and holding together through all , she kissed it tenderly in the hope that thus it might be with her and with him whose hand and whose voice returned on her , calling her his dearest life ! She durst only quit the shells to eat the dinner which Madge served at one o'clock -- a tolerable meal of slices of cold beef from a cook 's - shop , but seasoned with sour looks and a murmur at ladies ' fancies . The weariness and languor of the former day 's exertions made her for the present disinclined to explore the house , even had she had time , and when twilight came there could have been little but fragments at the bottom of the case , though she could see no more to sort them . And what were these noises around her making her start ? Rats !