ten o'clock
On Wednesday morning , Mr. Starr bade his family good-by and set out on a tour of Epworth League conventions . He was to be away from home until the end of the following week . A prospective Presbyterian theologian had been selected from the college to fill his pulpit on the Sabbath , and the girls , with their aunt , faced an unusually long period of running the parsonage to suit themselves . At ten o'clock the train carried their father off in the direction of Burlington , and at eleven o'clock the twins returned to the parsonage . They had given him a daughterly send-off at the station , and then gone to the library for books . Prudence , Fairy and Aunt Grace sat sewing on the side porch as they cut across the parsonage lawn , their feet crinkling pleasantly through the drift of autumn leaves the wind had piled beneath the trees . `` We 're out of potatoes , twins , '' said Prudence , as they drew near .