five o’clock
Miss Pole exclaimed , angry that we could be for a moment imposed upon . `` I believe he was robbed , just as Betty told me , and he is ashamed to own it ; and , to be sure , it was very silly of him to be robbed just at his own door ; I daresay he feels that such a thing wo n't raise him in the eyes of Cranford society , and is anxious to conceal it -- but he need not have tried to impose upon me , by saying I must have heard an exaggerated account of some petty theft of a neck of mutton , which , it seems , was stolen out of the safe in his yard last week ; he had the impertinence to add , he believed that that was taken by the cat . I have no doubt , if I could get at the bottom of it , it was that Irishman dressed up in woman 's clothes , who came spying about my house , with the story about the starving children . '' After we had duly condemned the want of candour which Mr Hoggins had evinced , and abused men in general , taking him for the representative and type , we got round to the subject about which we had been talking when Miss Pole came in ; namely , how far , in the present disturbed state of the country , we could venture to accept an invitation which Miss Matty had just received from Mrs Forrester , to come as usual and keep the anniversary of her wedding-day by drinking tea with her at five o'clock , and playing a quiet pool afterwards . Mrs Forrester had said that she asked us with some diffidence , because the roads were , she feared , very unsafe . But she suggested that perhaps one of us would not object to take the sedan , and that the others , by walking briskly , might keep up with the long trot of the chairmen , and so we might all arrive safely at Over Place , a suburb of the town . -LRB- No ; that is too large an expression : a small cluster of houses separated from Cranford by about two hundred yards of a dark and lonely lane . -RRB-