twelve o'clock
It was not all pleasant arranging and contriving for an undeviating `` living happy ever after . '' There were days now and then when the baby fretted , or lost her nap , and somebody had to hold her nearly all the time ; when the door-bell rang as if with a continuous and concerted intent of malice . Stormy Mondays happened when clothes would not dry , entailing Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays of interrupted and irregular service elsewhere . If Asenath Scherman 's real life had been anywhere but in her home and with her children , -- if it had consisted in being dressed in train-skirt and panier , lace sleeves and bracelets , with hair in a result of hour-long elaboration , at twelve o'clock ; or of being out making calls in high street toilet from that time until two ; or if her strength had had to be reserved for and repaired after evening parties ; if family care had been merely the constantly increasing friction which the whole study of the art of living must be to reduce and evade , that the real purpose and desire might sweep on unimpeded , -- she would soon have given up her experiment in despair . Or if , on the other part , there had been a household below , struggling continually to escape the necessity it was paid to meet , that it might get to its own separate interests and `` privileges , '' -- if it had been utterly foreign and unsympathetic in idea and perception , only watchful that no `` hand 's turn '' should be required of it beyond those set down in the bond , -- resenting every occurrence , however unavoidable , which changed or modified the day 's ordering , -- there would speedily have come the old story of worry , discontent , unreliance , disruption . But Asenath 's heart was with her little ones ; she went back into her own childhood with and for them , bringing out of it and living over again all its bright , blessed little ways . `` She would be grown up again , '' she said , `` by and by , when they were . ''