eight
o'clock
Compton had played Wil ` sbro ' and Strawyers , Duddingstone and Woodbury ; the choir had played the school , the single the married ; and when hay and harvest absorbed the rustic eleven , challenges began among their betters . The officers played the county -- Oxonians , Cantabs -- Etonians , Harrovians -- and wherever a match was proclaimed , that prime bowler , the Reverend Herbert Bowater , was claimed as the indispensable champion of his cause and country . If his sister had any power to moderate his zeal , she had had little chance of exercising it ; for Mrs. Bowater had had a rheumatic fever in March , and continued so much of an invalid all the summer that Jenny seldom went far from home , only saw her brother on his weekly visits to the sick-room , and was , as Rosamond said , unlikely to become a temptation to the warm heart and eager tongue . * * * * * The week-day congregation were surprised one August morning at eight o'clock by the entrance of three ladies in the most recent style of fashionable simplicity , and making the most demonstrative tokens of reverence . As the Rector came out he was seized upon at once by the elder lady . `` Mr. Charnock ! I must introduce myself ; I knew your dear mother so well when we were both girls .