three in the morning
Her companion went into it merely so far as the question of what then they were to do with them ; on which Mrs. Beale , who had by this time put them into her pocket , replied with dignity and with her hand on the place : `` We 're to send them back on the spot ! '' Susan , the child soon afterwards learnt , had been invited to contribute to this act of restitution her one appropriated coin ; but a closer clutch of the treasure showed in her private assurance to Maisie that there was a limit to the way she could be `` done . '' Maisie had been open with Mrs. Beale about the whole of last night 's transaction ; but she now found herself on the part of their indignant inferior a recipient of remarks that were so many ringing tokens of that lady 's own suppressions . One of these bore upon the extraordinary hour -- it was three in the morning if she really wanted to know -- at which Mrs. Beale had re-entered the house ; another , in accents as to which Maisie 's criticism was still intensely tacit , characterised her appeal as such a `` gime , '' such a `` shime , '' as one had never had to put up with ; a third treated with some vigour the question of the enormous sums due belowstairs , in every department , for gratuitous labour and wasted zeal . Our young lady 's consciousness was indeed mainly filled for several days with the apprehension created by the too slow subsidence of her attendant 's sense of wrong . These days would become terrific like the Revolutions she had learnt by heart in Histories if an outbreak in the kitchen should crown them ; and to promote that prospect she had through Susan 's eyes more than one glimpse of the way in which Revolutions are prepared . To listen to Susan was to gather that the spark applied to the inflammables and already causing them to crackle would prove to have been the circumstance of one 's being called a horrid low thief for refusing to part with one 's own .