five o'clock
I replied grimly , and he went out . It was all well enough for me to say -- as I had to to Tillie many a time -- that it was ridiculous to make a fuss over a person for what , after all , was an accident of birth . It was well enough for me to say that it was only by chance that I was n't strutting about with a crown on my head and a man blowing a trumpet to let folks know I was coming , and by the same token and the same chance Prince Oskar might have been a red-haired spring-house girl , breaking the steels in her figure stooping over to ladle mineral water out of a hole in the earth . Nevertheless , at five o'clock , after every one had gone , when I saw Miss Patty , muffled in furs , tripping out through the snow , with a tall thin man beside her , walking very straight and taking one step to her four , I felt as though somebody had hit me at the end of my breast-bone . They stopped a minute outside before they came in , and I had to take myself in hand . `` Now look here , Minnie , you idiot , '' I said to myself , `` this is America ; you 're as good as he is ; not a bend of the knee or a stoop of the neck . And if he calls you ` my good girl ' hit him . ''