five o'clock
You see , when one is shut up in the grim walls of a Royal Street house , with no one but a Tante Louise and a grim judge , how is one to learn that in this world there are faithless ones who may glance tenderly into one 's eyes at mass and pass the holy water on caressing fingers without being madly in love ? There was no one to tell Odalie , so she sat at home in the dull first days of Lent , and nursed her dear dead love , and mourned as women have done from time immemorial over the faithlessness of man . And when one day she asked that she might go back to the Ursulines ' convent where her childish days were spent , only to go this time as a nun , Monsieur le Juge and Tante Louise thought it quite the proper and convenient thing to do ; for how were they to know the secret of that Mardi Gras day ? If you never lived in Mandeville , you can not appreciate the thrill of wholesome , satisfied joy which sweeps over its inhabitants every evening at five o'clock . It is the hour for the arrival of the `` New Camelia , '' the happening of the day . As early as four o'clock the trailing smoke across the horizon of the treacherous Lake Pontchartrain appears , and Mandeville knows then that the hour for its siesta has passed , and that it must array itself in its coolest and fluffiest garments , and go down to the pier to meet this sole connection between itself and the outside world ; the little , puffy , side-wheel steamer that comes daily from New Orleans and brings the mail and the news . On this particular day there was an air of suppressed excitement about the little knot of people which gathered on the pier .