midnight
And like us , he admires Miss Fraenkel , perhaps the most unscientific creature in the United States . He feeds her passion for details of English life in the most shameless way . On this particular evening he entranced her with a description of the Scottish custom of sitting on the plinth of St. Paul 's Cathedral in London and welcoming the new year with bottles of whisky . Every Scotsman south of the Tweed was under oath to appear in the churchyard in kilts and tartan-plaid at midnight . Most of them , he added , wore red beards . Miss Fraenkel 's fine hazel eyes grew round as she visualized this frightful throng gathered among the graves of the churchyard . It occurred to me that it only showed , after all , how difficult it is to convey in words a just notion of a foreign land , and how easy it is for `` travellers ' tales '' to become incredible fabrications .