noon
`` Why , I 've been going to school every day , almost , ever since I can remember . And have n't I had the finest teacher in the world , all to myself ? '' His face brightened responsive to her laugh . This was at the tea-table -- for the Keltons dined at noon in conformity with local custom -- nearly a week after the unsigned letter had been delivered to Andrew Kelton by the unknown messenger . Sylvia and her grandfather had just returned from a walk , prolonged into the cool dusk . They sat at the square walnut table , where they had so long faced each other three times a day . Sylvia had never doubted that their lives would go on forever in just this way , -- that they would always be , as her grandfather liked to put it , `` shipmates , '' walking together , studying together , sitting as they sat now , at their simple meals , with just the same quaintly flowered dishes , the same oddly turned teapot , with its attendant cream pitcher -LRB- slightly cracked as to lip -RRB- and the sugar-bowl , with a laboring ship depicted in blue on its curved side , which was not related , even by the most remote cousinship , to anything else in the pantry .