ten in the morning
Their clipped _ g _ 's were carefully restored and their conversation was otherwise conducted on the highest plane . The dropping of this superfluous final letter had become habitual with Stanley through carelessness and conformance to environment . With Boland it was a matter of principle , practiced in a spirit of perversity , in rebellion against a world too severely regulated . By ten in the morning the heat drove them to cover for sleep and nooning in the scanty shade of a mesquite motte . Long before that , the two young gentlemen had arrived at an easier footing and the _ g _ 's were once more comfortably dropped . But poor Boland , by this time , was ill at ease in body . He was not inexperienced in hard riding of old ; and in his home on the northern tip of Manhattan , where the Subway goes on stilts and the Elevated runs underground , he had allowed himself the luxury of a saddle horse and ridden no little , in a mild fashion .