seven o’clock
And so , as I by my Zeus-given incorporeity was the one person who had a good view of the scene at large , you must pardon me for having withheld the veil of indirect narration . `` Too late , '' you will say if I offer you a Messenger now . But it was not thus that Mrs. Batch and Katie greeted Clarence when , lamentably soaked with rain , that Messenger appeared on the threshold of the kitchen . Katie was laying the table-cloth for seven o'clock supper . Neither she nor her mother was clairvoyante . Neither of them knew what had been happening . But , as Clarence had not come home since afternoon-school , they had assumed that he was at the river ; and they now assumed from the look of him that something very unusual had been happening there .