a quarter past five
She was a buxom lady of sixty , in an elaborate lace cap fastened by a frill under her chin , a dark , well-curled front concealing her forehead , a snowy neckerchief exhibiting its ample folds as far as her waist , and a stiff grey silk gown . She had a clean damask napkin pinned before her to guard her dress during the process of tea-making ; her favourite geraniums in the bow-window were looking as healthy as she could desire ; her own handsome portrait , painted when she was twenty years younger , was smiling down on her with agreeable flattery ; and altogether she seemed to be in as peaceful and pleasant a position as a buxom , well-drest elderly lady need desire . But , as in so many other cases , appearances were deceptive . Her mind was greatly perturbed and her temper ruffled by the fact that it was more than a quarter past five even by the losing timepiece , that it was half-past by her large gold watch , which she held in her hand as if she were counting the pulse of the afternoon , and that , by the kitchen clock , which she felt sure was not an hour too fast , it had already struck six . The lapse of time was rendered the more unendurable to Mrs. Jerome by her wonder that Mr. Jerome could stay out in the garden with Lizzie in that thoughtless way , taking it so easily that tea-time was long past , and that , after all the trouble of getting down the best tea-things , Mr. Tryan would not come . This honour had been shown to Mr. Tryan , not at all because Mrs. Jerome had any high appreciation of his doctrine or of his exemplary activity as a pastor , but simply because he was a ` Church clergyman ' , and as such was regarded by her with the same sort of exceptional respect that a white woman who had married a native of the Society Islands might be supposed to feel towards a white-skinned visitor from the land of her youth . For Mrs. Jerome had been reared a Churchwoman , and having attained the age of thirty before she was married , had felt the greatest repugnance in the first instance to renouncing the religious forms in which she had been brought up .