about eleven o'clock
I can only ask my reader , -- did you ever upset your ink-bottle , and watch , in helpless agony , the rapid spread of Stygian blackness over your fair manuscript or fairer table-cover ? With a like inky swiftness did gossip now blacken the reputation of the Rev. Amos Barton , causing the unfriendly to scorn and even the friendly to stand aloof , at a time when difficulties of another kind were fast thickening around him . One November morning , at least six months after the Countess Czerlaski had taken up her residence at the vicarage , Mrs. Hackit heard that her neighbour Mrs. Patten had an attack of her old complaint , vaguely called ` the spasms ' . Accordingly , about eleven o'clock , she put on her velvet bonnet and cloth cloak , with a long boa and muff large enough to stow a prize baby in ; for Mrs. Hackit regulated her costume by the calendar , and brought out her furs on the first of November ; whatever might be the temperature . She was not a woman weakly to accommodate herself to shilly-shally proceedings . If the season did n't know what it ought to do , Mrs. Hackit did . In her best days , it was always sharp weather at ` Gunpowder Plot ' , and she did n't like new fashions .