ten o'clock
She would carry out her lunch in it , and bring it back filled with flowers , berries , or nature specimens , as the case might be . Each was labelled with the owner 's name , and hung in a big cupboard under the stairs . Some of the girls also used walking-sticks with crooked handles , which were found convenient weapons for hooking down brambles or branches of catkins . Shortly after ten o'clock the school started , every Woodlander bearing her basket , containing sandwiches , two tartlets , an orange , and a small enamelled drinking-mug . There were to be no camp-fires to-day , so cold water from the stream would have to suffice , and would make tea all the more welcome when they returned home . It was quite a fine morning , with sudden gleams of sunshine that burst from the clouds and spread in long , slanting , golden rays over the valley ; just the kind of sky the early masters of landscape painting loved to put in their pictures , with a background of neutral tint and a bright , scraped-out light in the foreground . The little solitary farms stood out white here and there against the green of the fields , the pine-trees on the hill-sides showed darkly in contrast to the bare larches .