noon
For even as they spoke , he whose future each was planning , was entering upon a new life of his own , from which he was to look back upon his business career as a mere period of preparation for the real end and purpose of his earthly existence . _ Two _ The hack which the colonel had taken at the station after a two-days ' journey , broken by several long waits for connecting trains , jogged in somewhat leisurely fashion down the main street toward the hotel . The colonel , with his little boy , had left the main line of railroad leading north and south and had taken at a certain way station the one daily train for Clarendon , with which the express made connection . They had completed the forty-mile journey in two or three hours , arriving at Clarendon at noon . It was an auspicious moment for visiting the town . It is true that the grass grew in the street here and there , but the sidewalks were separated from the roadway by rows of oaks and elms and china-trees in early leaf . The travellers had left New York in the midst of a snowstorm , but here the scent of lilac and of jonquil , the song of birds , the breath of spring , were all about them .