three o'clock
When Aunt Maria was equipped and started , Mrs. Lennox watched her progress down the road with frantic impatience . It seemed to her that she could have gone faster with her chair . Truth was , that poor Aunt Maria , plodding heavily along in her gaiter-shoes , holding the green umbrella over her flaming face , made but slow and painful progress , and it was well that Mr. Lennox and Cynthia Lennox came home two hours before they were expected . It was three o'clock when Mr. Lennox came driving into the yard in the open buggy . Cynthia , erect and blooming , with her big bandbox in her lap , sat beside him , and the new Jersey cow , fastened by a rope to the tail of the buggy , came on behind with melancholy moos . Cynthia had bought her wedding-bonnet sooner than she had expected , so she had come home on the three o'clock train instead of the five ; and her father had bought the cow sooner than he had expected , and had come to the railroad crossing just about the time that Cynthia 's train arrived . So he had stopped and taken in her and her bandbox , and they had all ridden home together .