noon
Well , sisters , Christmas Day came , and we were up by daylight , for Cousin Emily Elizabeth is , as I have told you , a High Church woman and an Episcopalian . We have n't got any meeting-house of that denomination in our neighborhood , and I do n't exactly know what high and low church means , without it is that one set hold to meeting-houses with a belfry , and the others stand up for a high steeple -- a thing that I told Cousin E. E. we common people did n't aspire to ; at which she laughed again , as if I had said something awfully witty . Well , in another report I have given you an account of this daybreak meeting in the High Church , but just now I am taken up with the Christmas dinner . Now do n't calculate , because we eat dinner punctually at noon in Vermont , that people here do the same thing , because it is nothing of the sort . Poor working people do that in this city , and nobody else . The more genteel and the richer you are , the later you eat your meals . Most of the well-to-do merchants eat dinner at six .