four o'clock
And his attention was constantly wandering : there were fruit trees trained on the walls of the vicarage , and a long twig beat now and then against the windowpane ; sheep grazed stolidly in the field beyond the garden . It seemed as though there were knots inside his brain . Then panic seized him that he would not know the words by tea-time , and he kept on whispering them to himself quickly ; he did not try to understand , but merely to get them parrot-like into his memory . Mrs. Carey could not sleep that afternoon , and by four o'clock she was so wide awake that she came downstairs . She thought she would hear Philip his collect so that he should make no mistakes when he said it to his uncle . His uncle then would be pleased ; he would see that the boy 's heart was in the right place . But when Mrs. Carey came to the dining-room and was about to go in , she heard a sound that made her stop suddenly .