four o’clock
There happened that year to be an unusual proportion of girls and women in the advanced laboratory , perhaps because the class as a whole was an exceptionally small one . It numbered nine , and four of these were women students . As a consequence of its small size , it was possible to get along with the work on a much easier and more colloquial footing than a larger class would have permitted . And a custom had grown up of a general tea at four o'clock , under the auspices of a Miss Garvice , a tall and graceful girl of distinguished intellectual incompetence , in whom the hostess instinct seemed to be abnormally developed . Capes would come to these teas ; he evidently liked to come , and he would appear in the doorway of the preparation-room , a pleasing note of shyness in his manner , hovering for an invitation . From the first , Ann Veronica found him an exceptionally interesting man . To begin with , he struck her as being the most variable person she had ever encountered .