nine o'clock in the morning
She too has a picture over her mantelpiece , drawn in chalk by Janet long years ago . She looked at it before she went to bed . It is a head bowed beneath a cross , and wearing a crown of thorns . It was half-past nine o'clock in the morning . The midsummer sun was already warm on the roofs and weathercocks of Milby . The church-bells were ringing , and many families were conscious of Sunday sensations , chiefly referable to the fact that the daughters had come down to breakfast in their best frocks , and with their hair particularly well dressed . For it was not Sunday , but Wednesday ; and though the Bishop was going to hold a Confirmation , and to decide whether or not there should be a Sunday evening lecture in Milby , the sunbeams had the usual working-day look to the haymakers already long out in the fields , and to laggard weavers just ` setting up ' their week 's ` piece ' .