eight o'clock
The very rain was different -- straight rain , falling properly on to one 's umbrella ; not that violently blowing English stuff that got in everywhere . And it did leave off ; and when it did , behold the earth would be strewn with roses . Mr. Briggs , San Salvatore 's owner , had said , `` You get out at Mezzago , and then you drive . '' But he had forgotten what he amply knew , that trains in Italy are sometimes late , and he had imagined his tenants arriving at Mezzago at eight o'clock and finding a string of flys to choose from . The train was four hours late , and when Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins scrambled down the ladder-like high steps of their carriage into the black downpour , their skirts sweeping off great pools of sooty wet because their hands were full of suit-cases , if it had not been for the vigilance of Domenico , the gardener at San Salvatore , they would have found nothing for them to drive in . All ordinary flys had long since gone home . Domenico , foreseeing this , had sent his aunt 's fly , driven by her son his cousin ; and his aunt and her fly lived in Castagneto , the village crouching at the feet of San Salvatore , and therefore , however late the train was , the fly would not dare come home without containing that which it had been sent to fetch .