ten o'clock
`` Why , of course not , '' she declared , with regal indifference . `` How can you be so absurd ? '' And in face of such sublime recklessness , he was obliged to be convinced . Nan 's picnic on the lake was not concluded much before ten o'clock . She ran home through the moonlight , bareheaded , whistling as carelessly as a boy . Night and day were the same thing to her in the place in which she had lived all her life . There was not one of the village folk whom she did not know , not one for whom the doings of the wild Everards did not provide food for discussion .