four o'clock
`` Well , I can not understand it . '' `` That is the case with us all , papa . One half of the world can not understand the pleasures of the other . '' Later in the morning , and just as the girls were going to separate in preparation for the regular four o'clock dinner , the hero of this inimitable charade walked in again . Harriet turned away ; but Emma could receive him with the usual smile , and her quick eye soon discerned in his the consciousness of having made a push -- of having thrown a die ; and she imagined he was come to see how it might turn up . His ostensible reason , however , was to ask whether Mr. Woodhouse 's party could be made up in the evening without him , or whether he should be in the smallest degree necessary at Hartfield . If he were , every thing else must give way ; but otherwise his friend Cole had been saying so much about his dining with him -- had made such a point of it , that he had promised him conditionally to come .