three o'clock
`` You might tell me a little about them . '' But Felix only smiled . His powers of description faltered before that task ; and , proud of those powers , he did not choose to subject them to failure . Not till three o'clock that Saturday did the Bigwigs begin to come . Lord and Lady Britto first from Erne by car ; then Sir Gerald and Lady Malloring , also by car from Joyfields ; an early afternoon train brought three members of the Lower House , who liked a round of golf -- Colonel Martlett , Mr. Sleesor , and Sir John Fanfar -- with their wives ; also Miss Bawtrey , an American who went everywhere ; and Moorsome , the landscape-painter , a short , very heavy man who went nowhere , and that in almost perfect silence , which he afterward avenged . By a train almost sure to bring no one else came Literature in Public Affairs , alone , Henry Wiltram , whom some believed to have been the very first to have ideas about the land . He was followed in the last possible train by Cuthcott , the advanced editor , in his habitual hurry , and Lady Maude Ughtred in her beauty .