six o'clock
`` It gives me more pleasure to see you in them than it does to wear them myself . '' And though she did not know it , she embodied her gentle philosophy of life in that single sentence . Jenny had promised to come home a week before Lucy 's wedding , but at the last moment , while they waited supper for her , a telegram announced with serious brevity that she was `` detained . '' Twenty-four hours later a second telegram informed them that she would not arrive until the evening before the marriage , and at six o'clock on that day , Virginia , who had been packing Lucy 's trunks ever since breakfast , looked out of the window at the sound of the door-bell , and saw the cab which had contained her second daughter standing beside the curbstone . `` Mother , have you the change to pay the driver ? '' asked a vision of stern loveliness floating into the room . With the winter 's glow in her cheeks and eyes and the bronze sheen on her splendid hair , which was brushed in rippling waves from her forehead and coiled in a severely simple knot on her neck , she might have been a wandering goddess , who had descended , with immortal calm , to direct the affairs of the household .