about twelve o'clock
One morning , not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and Mary Garth , in which she confessed to him her feeling for Fred Vincy , it happened that her father had some business which took him to Yoddrell 's farm in the direction of Frick : it was to measure and value an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor , which Caleb expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea -LRB- it must be confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible terms from railroad companies -RRB- . He put up his gig at Yoddrell 's , and in walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his work , he encountered the party of the company 's agents , who were adjusting their spirit-level . After a little chat he left them , observing that by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going to measure . It was one of those gray mornings after light rains , which become delicious about twelve o'clock , when the clouds part a little , and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the hedgerows . The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy , who was coming along the lanes on horseback , if his mind had not been worried by unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do , with his father on one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church , with Mary on the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it , and with the working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman without capital and generally unskilled . It was the harder to Fred 's disposition because his father , satisfied that he was no longer rebellious , was in good humor with him , and had sent him on this pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds . Even when he had fixed on what he should do , there would be the task of telling his father .