ten o'clock
The fried ham and eggs , the fresh butter , the thick yellow cream , the sweet coarse bread , were all the best of their kind , and Claire smiled at her own expense as she looked at the emptied dishes , and reflected that , for a person who had professed herself unable to eat a bite , she had made a pretty good sweep ! The bed was somewhat bumpy , as farmhouse beds have a habit of being ; there was one big ball in especial which took many wrigglings to avoid ; but on the other hand the sheets smelt deliciously , not of lavender , but of lemon thyme , and the prevailing air of cleanliness was delicious after the smoke-laden atmosphere of town . Claire told herself that she could not expect to sleep . She resigned herself to hear the clock strike every hour -- and as a matter of fact after ten o'clock she was unconscious of the whole world , until her breakfast-tray was carried into the room next morning . After breakfast she had another nap , and after lunch still another , and in the intervals wandered about the farm-yard , laboriously striving to take an interest in what really interested her not at all . Hens seemed to her the dullest of created creatures , pigs repelled , cows were regarded with uneasy suspicion , and sheep , seen close at hand , lost all the picturesque quality of a distant flock , and became stupid long-faced creatures , by no means as clean as they might be . Milking-time aroused no ambition to experiment on her own account , and a glass of foaming new milk proved unexpectedly nauseous .