two o'clock
If you 're born there people never forget it ; it sticks to you like a strawberry mark on the end of your nose . And if you live there you might as well be dead , anyhow . '' Rosewater retorted that if St. Peter had a better library it was because she had nothing else to do than read , and , for all its court-house , was nothing but a suburb of Rosewater , anyway ; or at the best a mere headquarters for drummers . On the afternoon following Mrs. Haight 's card-party the large sunny room with its outlook upon marsh and hill was filled promptly at two o'clock ; for the word had flown about town that Minerva Haight was on the war-path and that the scalp she pursued was Isabel Otis 's . The President , as she rapped for order , betrayed no ruffling of the humorous imperturbability that had made her a power in Rosewater . Mrs. Leslie , although of `` the old Southern set '' of San Francisco , had none of the external elegances of Mrs. Wheaton , Mrs. Boutts and Dolly , or even of her own daughter . She was generally to be seen in a rusty black frock and bonnet , a pair of eye-glasses in black frames bestriding the bridge of her nose .