about four o'clock
When they quitted us giggling , I could not keep from laughing too ; though the sights I had seen , and the fright I had got , made me nervish and eerie ; so blithe was I when the cart rattled on our own street , and I began to waken Benjie , as we were not above a hundred yards from our own door . In this day 's adventures , I saw the sin and folly of my conduct visibly , as I jumped out of the cart at our close mouth . So I determined within myself , with a strong determination , to behave more sensibly for the future , and think no more about limekilns and coal-pits ; but to trust , for Benjie 's recovery from the chincough , to a kind Providence , together with Daffy 's elixir , and warm blankets . It was on a fine summer morning , somewhere about four o'clock , when I wakened from my night 's rest , and was about thinking to bestir myself , that I heard the sound of voices in the kail-yard stretching south from our back windows . I listened -- and I listened -- and I better listened -- and still the sound of the argle-bargling became more distinct , now in a fleeching way , and now in harsh angry tones , as if some quarrelsome disagreement had taken place . I had not the comfort of my wife 's company in this dilemmy ; she being away , three days before , on the top of Tammie Trundle the carrier 's cart , to Lauder , on a visit to her folks there ; her mother -LRB- my gudemother like -RRB- having been for some time ill with an income in her leg , which threatened to make a lameter of her in her old age , the two doctors there -- not speaking of the blacksmith , and sundry skeely old women -- being able to make nothing of the business ; so nobody happened to be with me in the room saving wee Benjie , who was lying asleep at the back of the bed , with his little Kilmarnock on his head , as sound as a top . Nevertheless , I looked for my clothes ; and , opening one half of the window shutter , I saw four young birkies , well dressed -- indeed three of them customers of my own -- all belonging to the town ; two of them young doctors , one of them a writer 's clerk , and the other a grocer .