ten o'clock
`` If they 'd only let us choose our own work at the High School I 'd vote for a life-class , '' she sighed , taking up her compasses and trying to focus her wandering mind on circles and angles and letters of the alphabet , instead of the outlines of the human form divine . It was on the very next Saturday that Kitty , craving for the country , and finding for once she had no particularly pressing engagement in town , suggested a cycling excursion . She wanted her sister to go with her , but Kingfield held superior attractions for Joan , who suggested Lesbia as a substitute and promised to lend her her bicycle . It was all arranged at the breakfast-table , and the two girls then and there cut sandwiches , fetched the machines , oiled them , pumped tyres , strapped on cycle-baskets , and started forth before ten o'clock . They rode first through the suburbs , where foliage was yet unspoilt with dust from motors , and the gardens were making a brave show of lilac , laburnum , and pink hawthorn . Then by degrees the houses grew fewer , the kerbstones disappeared , and the footpaths gave way to grassy borders ; there were unclipped hedges instead of ornamental railings , and fields , and woods , and streams on the other side of them . Bird-life was at its zenith ; larks , so high as to be almost invisible , poured out torrents of rapture ; every apple tree seemed to have a blackbird soloist on a topmost bough ; wrens , linnets , and hedge-warblers fluttered and twittered among low bushes , and flocks of jackdaws and rooks rose from the fields in whirling flights .