three o'clock
`` How I hate everything ! '' she murmured . The young man had passed through the Hatchard gate , and she had the street to herself . North Dormer is at all times an empty place , and at three o'clock on a June afternoon its few able-bodied men are off in the fields or woods , and the women indoors , engaged in languid household drudgery . The girl walked along , swinging her key on a finger , and looking about her with the heightened attention produced by the presence of a stranger in a familiar place . What , she wondered , did North Dormer look like to people from other parts of the world ? She herself had lived there since the age of five , and had long supposed it to be a place of some importance .