about ten minutes past seven
Oh , I 'll manage , I 'll manage fine . I got in a couple of chickens and a pair of ducks this morning ; I 'll warrant that your grand friends have enough to eat , Trixie . But now I must go and have a talk with Jane . '' It was the fashion to be punctual at Northbury , and when Catherine , Mabel and Loftus Bertram arrived about ten minutes past seven at the Gray House they found the pleasant old drawing-room already full of eager and expectant guests . Beatrice would have preferred meeting her new friends without any ceremony in the garden , but Mrs. Meadowsweet was nothing if she was not mistress of her own house , and she decided that it would be more becoming and _ comme il faut _ to wait in the drawing-room for the young visitors . Accordingly Mrs. Meadowsweet sat in her chair of state . She wore a rose-colored silk dress , and a quantity of puffed white lace round her neck and wrists ; and a cap which was tall and stiff , and had little tufts of yellow ribbon and little rosettes of Maltese lace adorning it , surmounted her large , full-blown face .