about eight o'clock in the
evening
Just a fortnight before Christmas , 1871 , a young man , twenty-four years of age , returned home to his dinner about eight o'clock in the evening . He was married , and with him and his wife lived his wife 's sister . At that somewhat late hour he walked in among the two young women , and another much older woman who was preparing the table for dinner . The wife and the wife 's sister each had a child in her lap , the elder having seen some fifteen months of its existence , and the younger three months .