eight o'clock
Yet when she stood at last on the train steps to say `` Good-bye , '' she had in her hand one of the roses he had given her and which she had worn . She touched it lightly to her lips and tossed it to him . By the time he had picked it up the train was on its way , and Evelyn , looking back , had her last glimpse of him standing straight and tall against the morning sky , the rose in his hand . It was eight o'clock when Eric drove Anne and Peggy through the drifts to the Crossroads school . It was nine when Geoffrey Fox came down to a late breakfast . It was ten when Richard and his mother and the dog Toby in a hired conveyance arrived at the place which had once been Nancy 's home . Imposing , even in its shabbiness , stood the old house , at the end of an avenue of spired cedars .