four o'clock
The engine was christened _ The Wonder of the Age _ ; and I have before me a handbill of the festivities of that proud day , which tells me that the mayor himself rode in an open truck , `` embellished with Union Jacks , lions and unicorns , and other loyal devices . '' And then Nature settled down to heal her wounds , and the Cuckoo Yalley Railway to pay no dividend to its promoters . It is now two years and more since , on an August day , I wound up my line by Dunford Bridge , and sauntered towards the Light Horseman Inn , two gunshots up the road . The time was four o'clock , or thereabouts , and a young couple sat on a bench by the inn-door , drinking cocoa out of one cup . Above their heads and along the house-front a vine-tree straggled , but its foliage was too thin to afford a speck of shade as they sat there in the eye of the westering sun . The man -LRB- aged about one-and-twenty -RRB- wore the uncomfortable Sunday-best of a mechanic , with a shrivelled , but still enormous , bunch of Sweet-William in his buttonhole . The girl was dressed in a bright green gown and a white bonnet .