noon
Perhaps it is not the height of good form to walk there any day , but Mr. King did not know that the fashion had changed , and that on Sunday this lovely promenade belongs to the butlers and the upper maids , especially to the butlers , who make it resplendent on Sunday afternoons when the weather is good . As the weather had thickened in the late afternoon , our party walked in a dumb-show , listening to the soft swish of the waves on the rocks below , and watching the figures of other promenaders , who were good enough ladies and gentlemen in this friendly mist . The next day Mr. King made a worse mistake . He remembered that at high noon everybody went down to the first beach , a charming sheltered place at the bottom of the bay , where the rollers tumble in finely from the south , to bathe or see others bathe . The beach used to be lined with carriages at that hour , and the surf , for a quarter of a mile , presented the appearance of a line of picturesquely clad skirmishers going out to battle with the surf . Today there were not half a dozen carriages and omnibuses altogether , and the bathers were few-nursery maids , fragments of a day-excursion , and some of the fair conventionists . Newport was not there .