four o'clock
Mrs. Veale was too thoughtful a Christian to give Loveday artificial flowers or silken petticoats unfitted to her station , but flannels , thickened by so much washing that Saint Anthony of Egypt himself could not have divined a female within their folds , were always forthcoming to protect the orphan girl from wintry winds . It was no day for flannel when Loveday knocked -- with the timidity that always assailed her , to her own annoyance , when she was about to see her godmother -- on the back door of the Vicarage . She heard her own voice , robbed of its warm eagerness , asking of the stout cook whether Mrs. Veale could see her for a minute . The cook sent the housemaid to the Vicar 's lady with the request , and Loveday stood in the large , sunny kitchen smelling the strange rich foods preparing for the four o'clock dinner . There was butcher 's meat , she could smell that -LRB- she had tasted it at the harvest feast at Upper Farm , where it was provided for the labourers once a year -RRB- , and there was a sweet pudding that she could see stirred together in a big white bowl , a pudding that smelt of sweetness like a posy . A noisy fly , the first of his kind , buzzed over the plate where the empty eggshells lay beside the bowl , and from them crawled to the scattered sugar that sparkled carelessly upon the rim . Loveday , of old , would have had a second 's envy of the fly that could thus browse on what smelt so good ; now the fine aromas affected her nostrils merely as incense might have those of her papist father -- as the savour of the great house where dwelt those to be propitiated .