eleven
o'clock
The eventful morning was bright , a full-faced sun confronting early window-gazers eastward , and all perceived -LRB- for they were practised in weather-lore -RRB- that there was permanence in the glow . Visitors soon began to flock in from county houses , villages , remote copses , and lonely uplands , the latter in oiled boots and tilt bonnets , to see the reception , or if not to see it , at any rate to be near it . There was hardly a workman in the town who did not put a clean shirt on . Solomon Longways , Christopher Coney , Buzzford , and the rest of that fraternity , showed their sense of the occasion by advancing their customary eleven o'clock pint to half-past ten ; from which they found a difficulty in getting back to the proper hour for several days . Henchard had determined to do no work that day . He primed himself in the morning with a glass of rum , and walking down the street met Elizabeth-Jane , whom he had not seen for a week . `` It was lucky , '' he said to her , `` my twenty-one years had expired before this came on , or I should never have had the nerve to carry it out . ''