five o'clock
`` Tea is ready , Bernard , '' said Laura Clowes , coming in from the garden . It was five o'clock on a June afternoon , but the hall was so dark that she had to grope her way . Wanhope was a large , old-fashioned manor-house , a plain brick front unbroken except in the middle , where its corniced roof was carried down by steps to an immense gateway of weathered stone , carved with the escutcheon of the family and their Motto : FORTIS ET FIDELIS . Wistarias rambled over both sides , wreathing the stone window-frames in their grape-like clusters of lilac bloom , and flagstones running from end to end , shallow , and so worn that a delicate growth of stonecrop fringed them , shelved down to a lawn . Indoors in the great hall it was dark because floor and staircase and wall and ceiling were all lined with Spanish chestnut-wood , while the windows were full of Flemish glass in purple and sepia and blue .