about eleven o'clock in the
morning
Sometimes she argued with the children about their plans , and ridiculed them . She used to say with a chuckle that she had heard people talk like that before -- lots of times -- but it never came to nothing in the end . One week about the middle of February , when they were in very sore straits indeed , old Jack applied to the secretary of the Organized Benevolence Society for assistance . It was about eleven o'clock in the morning when he turned the corner of the street where the office of the society was situated and saw a crowd of about thirty men waiting for the doors to be opened in order to apply for soup tickets . Some of these men were of the tramp or the drunken loafer class ; some were old , broken-down workmen like himself , and others were labourers wearing corduroy or moleskin trousers with straps round their legs under their knees . Linden waited at a distance until all these were gone before he went in . The secretary received him sympathetically and gave him a big form to fill up , but as Linden 's eyes were so bad and his hand so unsteady the secretary very obligingly wrote in the answers himself , and informed him that he would inquire into the case and lay his application before the committee at the next meeting , which was to be held on the following Thursday -- it was then Monday .