Doomsday by Warwick Deeping

Mary Viner sometimes wondered how her mother and father had managed to be born, for always they were late for any party or occasion. Like many people with nothing to do they did not appear to have sufficient leisure even for the accomplishment of nothing, nor had they any sense of time. Their unpunctuality was one of the afflictions of her youth. Mrs. Charlotte could not write a letter without a final flourish of "In haste." Old Hesketh had a habit of taking a bath just when his daughter was ready to serve up dinner, or he would have to be summoned from some pottering job in the garden by the tinkling of a handbell. Furze had asked them for half-past four, and at four-twenty Mary could hear them twittering away upstairs like a couple of sparrows busy building a nest.

She called up the stairs: "It is nearly half-past four."