morning about ten
o’clock
`` If she is willing to send her Gwendolen to Miss Whyte , I am disposed to let Margery , Gladys , and Dorothy go . Only you must have a very clear understanding with Miss Whyte , at the outset , as to hours and ventilation and Gladys 's hot milk . We can not move from the seaside until a fortnight after her term begins , and it will be utterly impossible for me to get the children to school in the mornings before half-past nine . '' It never occurred to Horace Barker , when one morning about ten o'clock , some six weeks later , he called at the kindergarten with his precious trio , that there was any impropriety in breaking in upon Miss Whyte 's occupations an hour after school had begun . What school-mistress could fail to be proud of the distinction of obtaining his three daughters as pupils at any hour of the twenty-four when he saw fit to proffer them ? He expected to find a cringing , deferential young person , who would , in the interest of her own bread and butter , accede without a murmur to any stipulations which so important a patroness as Mrs. Horace Barker might see fit to impose . He became conscious , in the first place , that the school-mistress was a much more attractive-looking young person than he had anticipated , and secondly , that she seemed rather amused than otherwise at his conditions .