ten in the morning
The towering stranger stood in the corridor looking in amazement from one woman to the other . The girl turned and said with careful distinctness : `` You have been so occupied of late that perhaps you have not heard the news . My uncle -- Mr. Richard Kincaid -- Dr. Harpe . '' Dr. Harpe standing at her office window saw the lovely Pearline Starr , curled and dressed at ten in the morning , trip down the street bearing a glass of buffalo berry jelly in her white-gloved hands , while Mrs. Percy Parrott sitting erect in the Parrotts ' new , second-hand surrey , drove toward the hotel , carefully protecting from accident some prized package which she held in her lap . Mrs. Parrott was wearing her new ding-a-ling hat , grass-green in color , which , topping off the moss-colored serge which , closely fitting her attenuated figure , gave Mrs. Parrott a surprising resemblance to a katydid about to jump . Dr. Harpe could not see Mrs. Abe Tutts walking gingerly across lots carrying a pot of baked beans and brown bread in her two hands , nor Mrs. Alva Jackson panting up another street with a Lady Baltimore cake in the hope of reaching the hotel before her dearest friend and enemy Mrs. Tutts , but Dr. Harpe knew from what she already had seen and from the curious glances cast at the windows of the Terriberry House , that the town was agog with Essie Tisdale 's romantic story and her newly established relationship to the important looking stranger . Mrs. Terriberry could be trusted to attend to that and in her capable hands it was certain to lose nothing in the telling .