about six o'clock
He saw it from another point of view now , and if the choice were between rut and whirlpool -- When he awoke , and lay looking at the sunlit blind , in the stillness of early morning he heard a sound always delightful , always soothing , that of scythe and whetstone ; then the long steady sweep of the blade through garden grass . Morton , old stick-in-the-mud , would not let his gardener use a mowing machine , the scythe was good enough for him ; and Harvey , recalled to the summer mornings of more than thirty years ago , blessed him for his pig-headedness . But another sound he missed , one he would have heard even more gladly . Waking thus at Pinner -LRB- always about six o'clock -RRB- , he had been wont to hear the voice of his little boy , singing . Possibly this was a doubtful pleasure to Miss Smith , in whose room Hughie slept ; but , to her credit , she had never bidden the child keep quiet . And there he lay , singing to himself , a song without words ; singing like a little bird at dawn ; a voice of innocent happiness , greeting the new day . Hughie was far off ; and in a strange room , with other children , he would not sing .