a quarter to eleven
On his next call there was a lively Ruth who invited him up to the library , read extracts from Stephen Leacock 's _ Nonsense Novels _ ; turned companionably serious , and told him how divided were her sympathies between her father -- the conscientiously worried employer -- and a group of strikers in his factory . She made coffee in a fantastic percolator , and played Débussy and ragtime . At ten-thirty , the hour at which he had vehemently resolved to go , they were curled in two big chairs eating chocolate peppermints and talking of themselves apropos of astronomy and the Touricar and Lincoln Beachey 's daring and Mason Winslow and patriotism and Joralemon . Ruth 's father drifted in from his club at a quarter to eleven . Carl now met him for the first time . He was a large-stomached , bald , sober , friendly man , with a Gladstone collar , a huge watch-chain , kindly trousers and painfully smart tan boots , a father of the kind who gives cigars and non-committal encouragement to daughter 's suitors . * * * * * It takes a voice with personality and modulations to make a fifteen-minute telephone conversation tolerable , and youth to make it possible .