four o'clock in the
morning
Seeing that Nan was not there , he went to the door , the upper half of which she had left open . The rain had quite left off , and the night was very beautiful . A great many stars shone in the sky ; Jimmy had never looked out so late before , he had never seen the heavens such a dark blue nor the stars so large and bright . It was four o'clock in the morning , the air felt very cold , and he could see that they were going slowly along a country road . About a yard from the back of his own van , a grey horse jogged along between the shafts of another van , with a rough brown pony tied beside it . Feeling curious to see as much as he could , Jimmy opened the door , and climbed carefully down the steps . Then he ran to the side of the road , although he always took care to keep close to the clown 's van .