six o'clock
She let lodgings . And very genteel lodgings they were , with a private entrance in Beulah Place , and a double door that excluded draughts and the heterogeneous odors from the shop . These lodgers of Mrs. Watkins were the talk of the neighborhood , and many a passer-by looked curiously up at the bright windows and clean white curtains , between which in summer time bloomed the loveliest flowers , and the earliest snow-drops and crocuses in spring , in the hope of seeing two fair faces which had rather haunted their memory ever since they had first seen them . It was six o'clock on the evening of a dreary November day . Watkins 's shop was empty , for the fog and the rawness and the cold had driven folks early to their homes ; and Mrs. Watkins herself , fortified with strong tea and much buttered toast , was entering her profits on a small greasy slate , and casting furtive glances every now and then into the warm , snug parlor , where her nephew and factotum Tony was refreshing himself in his turn from the small black teapot on the hob . A fresh , wholesome-looking woman was Mrs. Watkins , with an honest , reliable face and a twofold chin ; but she had two peculiarities -- she always wore the stiffest and cleanest and most crackling of print dresses , and her hair was nearly always pinned up in curl-papers under her black cap . Mrs. Watkins was engaged in jotting down small dabs of figures on the slate and rubbing them out again , when the green baize swing-door leading to the passage was pushed back , and a tall grave-looking woman in black entered the shop and quietly approached the counter .