nearly three o'clock
There will be decent rooms for Robin and her governess . The two nurseries can be made fit for human beings to live in and used for other purposes . The house will be greatly improved . '' It was nearly three o'clock when Feather went upstairs to her dozing maid , because , after he had left her , she sat some time in the empty , untidy little drawing-room and gazed straight before her at a painted screen on which shepherdesses and swains were dancing in a Watteau glade infested by flocks of little Loves . When , from Robin 's embarrassed young consciousness , there had welled up the hesitating confession , `` She -- does n't like me , '' she could not , of course , have found words in which to make the reasons for her knowledge clear , but they had for herself no obscurity . The fair being who , at rare intervals , fluttered on the threshold of her world had a way of looking at her with a shade of aloof distaste in her always transient gaze . The unadorned fact was that Feather did NOT like her .