five o'clock
They frequently corresponded , and their letters included many a playful challenge to test one another 's West Country hospitality . Now while the Major had -LRB- to put it mildly -RRB- but exchanged one sphere of activity for another , Mr. Basket , a married man , embraced the repose of a contemplative life ; cultivating a small garden and taking his wife twice a week to the theatre , of which he was a devotee . These punctual jaunts , very sensibly practised as a purge against dullness , together with the stir and hubbub of a garrison town in which his walled garden stood isolated , as it were , all day long , amid marchings , countermarchings , bugle-calls , and the rumble of wagons filled with material of war , gave him a sense of being in the swim -- of close participation in the world 's affairs ; failing which a great many folk seem to miss half the enjoyment of doing nothing in particular . Mr. Basket welcomed the Major cordially , with a dozen rallying comments on his healthy rural complexion , and carried him off to admire the garden while Mrs. Basket enlarged her preparations for dinner at five o'clock . The garden was indeed calculated to excite admiration , less for its flowers -- for Mr. Basket confessed ruefully that very few flowers would grow with him -- than for a hundred ingenuities by which this defect was concealed . `` And the beauty of it is , '' announced Mr. Basket , with a wave of his hand towards a black-and-white edging compound of marrow bones and the inverted bases of wine bottles , disposed alternately , `` it harbours no slugs . It saves labour , too ; you would be surprised at the sum it used to cost me weekly in labour alone .