about noon
Chapter XXII . Comfort Cottage . It was about two o'clock in the afternoon , and I suddenly heard a strange sound , that of our fowl cackling . Yesterday I heard her tell-tale note about noon , and the day before just as I was eating my breakfast . I knew that it would be so ! The serpent has entered Eden . That fowl has laid before eight in the morning for three weeks without interruption , and she has now entered upon a career of wild and reckless uncertainty which compels me to eat eggs from twelve to twenty-four hours old , just as if I were in London .