two o'clock
Long years of practice have made you familiar with the shortest , neatest , most expeditious method of doing every household office , so that really , for the greater part of the time in your house , there seems to a looker-on to be nothing to do . You rise in the morning and dispatch your husband , father , and brothers to the farm or wood-lot ; you go sociably about chatting with each other , while you skim the milk , make the butter , turn the cheeses . The forenoon is long ; it 's ten to one that all the so-called morning work is over , and you have leisure for an hour 's sewing or reading before it is time to start the dinner preparations . By two o'clock your housework is done , and you have the long afternoon for books , needlework , or drawing , -- for perhaps there is among you one with a gift at her pencil . Perhaps one of you reads aloud while the others sew , and you manage in that way to keep up with a great deal of reading . I see on your bookshelves Prescott , Macaulay , Irving , besides the lighter fry of poems and novels , and , if I mistake not , the friendly covers of the `` Atlantic . '' When you have company , you invite Mrs. Smith or Brown or Jones to tea : you have no trouble -- they come early , with their knitting or sewing ; your particular crony sits with you by your polished stove while you watch the baking of those light biscuits and tea rusks for which you are so famous , and Mrs. Somebodyelse chats with your sister , who is spreading the table with your best china in the best room .