four o'clock
But he said nothing that night , and she had to wait for a while . The weather , which had certainly shown the most graceful politeness to the Surrey week , was still in a complaisant frame of mind when Monday morning dawned , and the tents were put up for the school children , and the Aunt Sallies and other instruments of amusement were posed in their places about the garden , without any fear arising lest the rain should prevent their being used . Esmé Amarinth spent the morning in reflecting upon his address , and constructing pale paradoxes ; and the rest of the party at the `` Retreat '' did nothing with all the quiet ingenuity that seems inbred in the English race . At four o'clock the sound of lusty singing in the dusty distance announced the approach of the expected guests , who , under the direction of Mr. Smith , expressed their youthful feelings of anticipation and excitement in a processional hymn , whose words dealt with certain ritualistic doctrines in a spirit of serene but rather incompetent piety , and whose tune was remarkable for the Gounod spirit that pervaded its rather love-lorn harmonies . As Mr. Amarinth said , it sounded like a French apostrophe to a Parisian Eros , and was tinged with the amorous music colour of Covent Garden . Mrs. Windsor received the party with weary grace , and a general salute that might have included all the national schools in the kingdom , so wide and so impersonal was its manner . She impressed the children as much as Madame Valtesi frightened them by examining them with a stony and sphinx-like gravity through her tortoise-shell eyeglass .