noon
The girls were marshaled through the sculpture and paintings and various art objects with about the result which might have been expected . As blankly inexperienced of painting and sculpture as any Bushmen , they received this sudden enormous dose of those arts with an instant , self-preservatory incapacity to swallow even a small amount of them . It is true that the very first exhibits they saw , the lions outside the building , the first paintings they encountered , made an appreciable impression on them ; but after this they followed their elders through the interminable crowded halls of the museum , their legs aching with the effort to keep their balance on the polished floors , their eyes increasingly glazed and dull . For a time a few eccentric faces or dresses among the other sightseers penetrated through this merciful insensibility , but by noon the capacity for even so much observation as this had left them . They set one foot before the other , they directed their eyes upon the multitudinous objects exhibited , they nodded their heads to comments made by the others , but if asked suddenly what they had just seen in the room last visited , neither of them could have made the faintest guess . At half-past twelve , their aunt and mother , highly self-congratulatory over the educational morning , voted that enough was as good as a feast , and led their stunned and stupefied charges away to Aunt Victoria 's hotel for lunch . It was while they were consuming this exceedingly appetizing meal that Sylvia saw , threading his way towards them between the other tables , a tall , weedy , expensively dressed young man , with a pale freckled face and light-brown hair .