about three
o'clock in the afternoon
The mouth wrinkle under her nose was pursed to an extreme resolution , and ever and again she told her umbrella to come up or gave her tightly clutched bundle a vindictive jerk . And at times her lips mumbled with fragments of some foreseen argument between herself and Skinner . And far away , miles and miles away , a steeple and a hanger grew insensibly out of the vague blue to mark more and more distinctly the quiet corner where Cheasing Eyebright sheltered from the tumult of the world , recking little or nothing of the Herakleophorbia concealed in that white bundle that struggled so persistently towards its orderly retirement . So far as I can gather , the pullets came into Hickleybrow about three o'clock in the afternoon . Their coming must have been a brisk affair , though nobody was out in the street to see it . The violent bellowing of little Skelmersdale seems to have been the first announcement of anything out of the way . Miss Durgan of the Post Office was at the window as usual , and saw the hen that had caught the unhappy child , in violent flight up the street with its victim , closely pursued by two others .