midnight
The different inflexion of voice helped Gwen against that perplexing sense of her likeness to her twin , which would assert itself whenever she became silent . It was to fend this off , in such a pause , that she said : -- `` You are both just eighty this year , Granny , are you not ? '' `` Eighty-one , my lady . When our clock strikes midnight Maisie will have been eighty-one years in the world , and myself with but a few minutes to make up the tale . My mother told me so when I was still too young to understand , but I bore her words in mind . She was dead a year when my brother dressed those little dolly figures in the mill . I mind that he put it off , so we should not be in black for our mother .