seven o'clock
If her ideas about it -- she kept them carefully in solution -- could have been precipitated they might have appeared in a formula favourite with her brother , the Surgeon-Major , who often talked of giving nature a chance . She told him finally on the morning of his first drive . They went together and alone , Alicia taking her brother 's place in the carriage at a demand for him from the hospital . It was seven o'clock , and the morning wind swept soft and warm from over the river . There was a white light on all the stucco parapets , and their shadows slanted clear and delicately purple to the west . The dust slept on the broad roads of the Maidan , only a curling trace lifted itself here and there at the heel of a cart-bullock , and nothing had risen yet of the lazy tumult of the streets that knotted themselves in the city . From the river , curving past the statue of an Indian administrator , came a string of country people with baskets on their heads .