seven o'clock
So many circumstances connected with Boyce 's visit were of a nature that precluded confidential discussion with Marigold , -- that precluded , indeed , confidential discussion with anyone else . The suddenness of his departure I learned that afternoon from Mrs. Boyce , who sent me by hand a miserable letter characteristically rambling . From it I gathered certain facts . Leonard had come into her bedroom at seven o'clock , awakening her from the first half-hour 's sleep she had enjoyed all night , with the news that he had been unexpectedly summoned back . When she came to think of it , she could n't imagine how he got the news , for the post did not arrive till eight o'clock , and Mary said no telegram had been delivered and there had been no call on the telephone . But she supposed the War Office had secret ways of communicating with officers which it would not be well to make known . The whole of this war , with its killing off of the sons of the best families in the land , and the sleeping in the mud with one 's boots on , to say nothing of not being able to change for dinner , and the way in which they knew when to shoot and when not to shoot , was all so mysterious that she had long ago given up hope of understanding any of its details .