eight o'clock
It was not that her aspect was funereal ; but it contained , somehow , an announcement that she had , for the present , no more thought to give to casting a line . Miss Birdseye had quietly passed away , in the evening , an hour or two after Ransom 's visit . They had wheeled her chair into the house ; there had been nothing to do but wait for complete extinction . Miss Chancellor and Miss Tarrant had sat by her there , without moving , each of her hands in theirs , and she had just melted away , towards eight o'clock . It was a lovely death ; Doctor Prance intimated that she had never seen any that she thought more seasonable . She added that she was a good woman -- one of the old sort ; and that was the only funeral oration that Basil Ransom was destined to hear pronounced upon Miss Birdseye . The impression of the simplicity and humility of her end remained with him , and he reflected more than once , during the days that followed , that the absence of pomp and circumstance which had marked her career marked also the consecration of her memory .