six o'clock
Some days passed without a second meeting of the members for reports , but they gave each other significant looks and tried very hard to gain the little crosses that were to mark a good day . Betty was in despair when evening after evening she had to put down a cipher , and it was a great humiliation to find how often she yielded to a temptation to say funny things about people . To be sure old Mrs. Max was an ugly old gossip , but Betty need not have confided this opinion to Serena and Letty as they happened to look out of the kitchen windows , to see Mrs. Max go by . Betty had succeeded in being blameless until past six o'clock that day , and it was the fifth day of trial ; lost now , and black-marked like those that had gone before . She went back to the garden and sat down in the summer-house much dejected . The light that came through the grape and clematis leaves was dim and tinted with green ; it was a little damp there too , and quite like a sorrowful little hermitage . It is very hard work trying to cure a fault .