about noon
Now , as I knew that Mrs. Primmins was indispensable to the comforts of my honored parents -LRB- the more so as she had once lived in London , and knew all its ways -RRB- , I suggested that she should take the outside seat , and that I should perform the journey on foot , -- a primitive mode of transport which has its charms to a young man with stout limbs and gay spirits . The guard 's outstretched arm left my mother little time to oppose this proposition , to which my father assented with a silent squeeze of the hand . And having promised to join them at a family hotel near the Strand , to which Mr. Squills had recommended them as peculiarly genteel and quiet , and waved my last farewell to my poor mother , who continued to stretch her meek face out of the window till the coach was whirled off in a cloud like one of the Homeric heroes , I turned within , to put up a few necessary articles in a small knapsack which I remembered to have seen in the lumber-room , and which had appertained to my maternal grandfather ; and with that on my shoulder , and a strong staff in my hand , I set off towards the great city at as brisk a pace as if I were only bound to the next village . Accordingly , about noon I was both tired and hungry ; and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty inns yet peculiar to England , but which , thanks to the railways , will soon be amongst the things before the Flood , I sat down at a table under some clipped limes , unbuckled my knapsack , and ordered my simple fare with the dignity of one who , for the first time in his life , bespeaks his own dinner and pays for it out of his own pocket . While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the landlord called `` No mistake , '' two pedestrians , passing the same road which I had traversed , paused , cast a simultaneous look at my occupation , and induced no doubt by its allurements , seated themselves under the same lime-trees , though at the farther end of the table . I surveyed the new-comers with the curiosity natural to my years . The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty , though sundry deep lines , and hues formerly florid and now faded , speaking of fatigue , care , or dissipation , might have made him look somewhat older than he was .