four o'clock
`` Well , I give notice , '' announced Myrtella with all the dignity of offended majesty , and shoving Chick before her , she slammed the door upon the astonished Doctor and stalked haughtily down the stairs . `` A bride who does n't see her duty , should be _ made _ to see it , '' declared Mrs. Sequin to Mrs. Ivy in her most impressive manner . `` Something is naturally expected of the wife of John Jay Queerington . I told her expressly that Friday was her day , I even telephoned to remind her , and here it is four o'clock , and people beginning to come , and she off playing tennis ! '' They were waiting in the twilight of the Queerington parlor , that plain , stiff , old maid of a parlor that had sprung completely furnished from the brain of a decorator some two decades before and never blinked an eyelid since . It was a room with which no one had ever taken liberties . Hattie had once petulantly remarked that her father would as soon have moved a tooth from his lower to his upper jaw , as to have moved an ornament or picture from the parlor to the second floor .