four o'clock
Much thought , and interviews with several of the farmers , who all but one -- a shaky fellow at best -- were for giving the laborers a sharp lesson , occupied the interval . Though he had refused to admit the notion that the men could be chicaned , as his agent had implied , he certainly did wonder a little whether a certain measure of security might not in some way be guaranteed , which would still leave him and the farmers a free hand . But the more he meditated on the whole episode , the more he perceived how intimately it interfered with the fundamental policy of all good landowners -- of knowing what was good for their people better than those people knew themselves . As four o'clock approached , he walked down to the home farm . The sky was lightly overcast , and a rather chill , draughty , rustling wind had risen . Resolved to handle the men with the personal touch , he had discouraged his agent and the farmers from coming to the conference , and passed the gate with the braced-up feeling of one who goes to an encounter . In that very spick-and-span farmyard ducks were swimming leisurely on the greenish pond , white pigeons strutting and preening on the eaves of the barn , and his keen eye noted that some tiles were out of order up there .