Two o’clock
`` It 's dull enough of me not to understand you by this time . Send word upstairs when I am wanted . '' She left him , and went back to her room . Two o'clock came ; and in a quarter of an hour afterward the visitors had arrived . Short as the notice had been , cheerless as the Sanitarium looked to spectators from without , the doctor 's invitation had been largely accepted , nevertheless , by the female members of the families whom he had addressed . In the miserable monotony of the lives led by a large section of the middle classes of England , anything is welcome to the women which offers them any sort of harmless refuge from the established tyranny of the principle that all human happiness begins and ends at home . While the imperious needs of a commercial country limited the representatives of the male sex , among the doctor 's visitors , to one feeble old man and one sleepy little boy , the women , poor souls , to the number of no less than sixteen -- old and young , married and single -- had seized the golden opportunity of a plunge into public life .