three o'clock
` I want her to come and see him at his bedtime , ' she said , ` for of course we ca n't get back for that . ' David said nothing . When they got to the station , he dared not even propose to her the extra comfort of first class , lest he should intensify the alarm he perfectly well divined under her offhand , flighty manner . By three o'clock they were in the waiting-room of the famous doctor they had come to see . Lucy looked round her nervously as they entered , with quick , dilating nostrils , and across David there swept a sudden choking memory of the trapped and fluttering birds he had sometimes seen in his boyhood struggling beneath a birdcatcher 's net on the moors . As the appointment was at an unusual time , they were not kept waiting very long by the great man . He received them with a sort of kindly distance , made his examination very quickly , and asked her a number of general questions , entering the answers in his large patients ' book .