three o'clock in the afternoon
Within it was empty , and on the top boasted but three passengers besides Iglesias himself . It followed that , carrying insufficiency of ballast , the great red-painted vehicle lumbered , and jerked , and swayed uneasily ; while the lighter traffic swept past it in a glittering stream , the dominant note of which was black as against the dirty drab of the recently watered wood-pavement . And the character of that traffic was new to Dominic Iglesias , though he had travelled the Hammersmith Road , Kensington High Street and Kensington Gore , Knightsbridge and Piccadilly , back and forth daily , these many years . For the exigencies of business demanding that the hours of his journeying should be early and late , always the same , it came about that the aspect of these actually so-familiar thoroughfares was novel , as beheld in the height of the season at three o'clock in the afternoon . At first Iglesias saw without seeing , busy with his own uncheerful thoughts . But after a while he began to speculate idly on the scene around him , turning to the outward and material for distraction , if not for actual comfort . And so the stream of carriages and hansoms , and the conspicuously well-favoured human beings occupying them , began to intrigue his attention .