Twelve o'clock
With some alarm at the slowing up of the days and the accelerating of the years , Merlin became thirty-one , thirty-two -- then almost with a rush arrived at that age which , with all its washing and panning , can only muster a bare handful of the precious stuff of youth : he became thirty-five . And one day on Fifth Avenue he saw Caroline . It was Sunday , a radiant , flowerful Easter morning and the avenue was a pageant of lilies and cutaways and happy April-colored bonnets . Twelve o'clock : the great churches were letting out their people -- St. Simon 's , St. Hilda 's , the Church of the Epistles , opened their doors like wide mouths until the people pouring forth surely resembled happy laughter as they met and strolled and chattered , or else waved white bouquets at waiting chauffeurs . In front of the Church of the Epistles stood its twelve vestrymen , carrying out the time-honored custom of giving away Easter eggs full of face-powder to the church-going debutantes of the year . Around them delightedly danced the two thousand miraculously groomed children of the very rich , correctly cute and curled , shining like sparkling little jewels upon their mothers ' fingers . Speaks the sentimentalist for the children of the poor ?