about four
o'clock in the afternoon
Devine admitted that this might be advisable , and Saunders , who was a man of action , took the back trail in the next half-hour . He had held his own in one phase of the conflict which it was evident must be fought before the Grenfell Consolidated could be floated , and it was necessary that somebody should go down to despatch the specimens to Weston . They were duly delivered to the latter ; and the day after he got them it happened that he sat with Ida on a balcony outside a room on the lower floor , at the rear of Stirling 's house . It was about four o'clock in the afternoon and very hot , but a striped awning was stretched above their heads , and a broad-leafed maple growing close below flung its cool shadow across them . Looking out beneath the roof of greenery they could see the wooded slope of the mountain cutting against a sky of cloudless blue , while the stir of the city came up to them faintly . Weston had already , at one time or another , spent several pleasant hours on that balcony . They had been speaking of nothing in particular , when at length Ida turned to him .