four o'clock
She could trace it to no particular spot , and conjectured that perhaps a mouse had taken up his abode somewhere in the room , and , frightened by her presence , had run against some of the numerous glass and china ornaments on the etagere , jostling them until they jingled . Replacing the book which she had taken from the shelves , and fastening the box that contained the MSS. , she examined the cabinets , found them securely closed , and then hurried out of the room , locked the door , took the key , and went to her own apartment with nerves more unsettled than she felt disposed to confess . For some time after she laid her head on her pillow , she racked her brain for an explanation of the singular sensation she had experienced , and at last , annoyed by her restlessness and silly superstition , she was just sinking into dreams of Ammon and Serapis , when the fierce barking of Ali caused her to start up in terror . The dog seemed almost wild , running frantically to and fro , howling and whining ; but finally the sounds receded , gradually quiet was restored , and Edna fell asleep soon after the scream of the locomotive and the rumble of the cars told her that the four o'clock train had just started to Chattanooga . Modern zoologic science explodes the popular fallacy that chameleons assume , and reflect at will , the color of the substance on which they rest or feed ; but , with a profound salaam to savants , it is respectfully submitted that the mental saurian -- human thought -- certainly takes its changing hues , day by day , from the books through which it crawls devouringly . Is there not ground for plausible doubt that , if the work-bench of Mezzofanti had not stood just beneath the teacher 's window , whence the ears of the young carpenter were regaled from morning till night with the rudiments of Latin and Greek , he would never have forsworn planing for parsing , mastered forty dialects , proved a walking scarlet-capped polygot , and attained the distinction of an honorary nomination for the office of interpreter-general at the Tower of Babel ? The hoary associations and typical significance of the numerous relics that crowded Mr. Murray 's rooms seized upon Edna 's fancy , linked her sympathies with the huge pantheistic systems of the Orient , and filled her mind with waifs from the dusky realm of a mythology that seemed to antedate all the authentic chronological computations of man .