four o'clock
It was a warm , golden-cloudy , lovable afternoon . In the big living-room at Ingleside Susan Baker sat down with a certain grim satisfaction hovering about her like an aura ; it was four o'clock and Susan , who had been working incessantly since six that morning , felt that she had fairly earned an hour of repose and gossip . Susan just then was perfectly happy ; everything had gone almost uncannily well in the kitchen that day . Dr. Jekyll had not been Mr. Hyde and so had not grated on her nerves ; from where she sat she could see the pride of her heart -- the bed of peonies of her own planting and culture , blooming as no other peony plot in Glen St. Mary ever did or could bloom , with peonies crimson , peonies silvery pink , peonies white as drifts of winter snow . Susan had on a new black silk blouse , quite as elaborate as anything Mrs. Marshall Elliott ever wore , and a white starched apron , trimmed with complicated crocheted lace fully five inches wide , not to mention insertion to match .