one o'clock
The party that evening was to be a strictly informal affair . Grace had suspected that the girls whom the members of the Phi Sigma Tau were to entertain were not likely to possess evening gowns . In order to avoid any possibility of hurt feelings , she had quietly requested those invited to wear the afternoon gowns in which they would appear at the game . Before one o'clock her guests had arrived . They were three shy , quiet girls who had worshiped Grace from a distance , and who had been surprised almost to tears by her invitation . Two of them were from Portville , a small town about seventy miles from Oakdale , and had begun High School with Grace , who had been too busy with her own affairs up to the present to find out much about them . The other girl , Marie Bateman , had entered the class that year .