about eleven o'clock
Louis spent most of his Sundays in making a cot for his son but his fatal lack of thoroughness was a drawback , for it seemed to come to pieces as quickly as he got it together . Marcella looked after the fowls and the cows ; she did most of the cooking at the Homestead ; she got the children beyond the hanger and pothook stage of writing and filled their minds , hitherto worried by family cares , with legend and fairy-tale . She wrote often to Dr. Angus , and he sent her books and garden seeds . All the time she and Louis never found a moment in which to be idle ; about eleven o'clock every day she took his lunch across the clearing to him ; she collaborated a good deal with Mrs. Beeton in making various ambitious dishes for him , but as they were almost entirely made of mutton , `` standard '' flour and eggs , there was not much variety . When the fried sheep had lived too long before being killed , or been kept too long after death , they spent considerable time looking at the pretty pictures in the cookery book : Marcella told of Wullie 's feasts in the beach-hut . Louis remembered restaurant celebrations . But they were always too hungry to care much what they ate ; the most leathery damper , the most difficult mutton was pleasant eaten out of doors in the faint smoke of the gorse fires .