six in the evening
In the world of the small incomes , young life flowed out turbulently into the street , like an exhaustless kennel-deluge , in all weathers . Next to the children of the inhabitants , in visible numerical importance , came the shirts and petticoats , and miscellaneous linen of the inhabitants ; fluttering out to dry publicly on certain days of the week , and enlivening the treeless little gardens where they hung , with lightsome avenues of pinafores , and solemn-spreading foliage of stout Welsh flannel . Here that absorbing passion for oranges -LRB- especially active when the fruit is half ripe , and the weather is bitter cold -RRB- , which distinguishes the city English girl of the lower orders , flourished in its finest development ; and here , also , the poisonous fumes of the holyday shop-boy 's bad cigar told all resident nostrils when it was Sunday , as plainly as the church bells could tell it to all resident ears . The one permanent rarity in this neighborhood , on week days , was to discover a male inhabitant in any part of it , between the hours of nine in the morning and six in the evening ; the one sorrowful sight which never varied , was to see that every woman , even to the youngest , looked more or less unhappy , often care-stricken , while youth was still in the first bud ; oftener child-stricken before maturity was yet in the full bloom . As for the great central portion of the suburb -- or , in other words , the locality of the moderate incomes -- it reflected exactly the lives of those who inhabited it , by presenting no distinctive character of its own at all . In one part , the better order of houses imitated as pompously as they could , the architectural grandeur of the mansions owned by the large incomes ; in another , the worst order of houses respectably , but narrowly , escaped a general resemblance to the brick boxes of the small incomes . In some places , the `` park '' influences vindicated their existence superbly in the persons of isolated ladies who , not having a carriage to go out in for an airing , exhibited the next best thing , a footman to walk behind them : and so got a pedestrian airing genteelly in that way .