nine o'clock
Nothing could illustrate more clearly the plan on which Mr. and Mrs. T.A. Buck conducted their married life . Theirs was the morning calm and harmony which comes to two people who are free to digest breakfast and the First Page simultaneously with no -- `` Just let me see the inside sheet , will you , dear ? '' to mar the day 's beginning . In the days when she had been Mrs. Emma McChesney , travelling saleswoman for the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company , New York , her perusal of the morning 's news had been , perforce , a hasty process , accomplished between trains , or in a small-town hotel ` bus , jolting its way to the depot for the 7.52 ; or over an American-plan breakfast throughout which seven eighths of her mind was intent on the purchasing possibilities of a prospective nine o'clock skirt buyer . There was no need now of haste , but the habit of years still clung . From eight-thirty to eight thirty-five A.M. Emma McChesney Buck was always in partial eclipse behind the billowing pages of her newspaper . Only the tip of her topmost coil of bright hair was visible .