nine in the morning
And Mrs. Tompkins was so alarmed that she gave only six hours ' notice to leave , though her husband was far on the salt-sea wave , according to her own account , and she had none to make her welcome except her father 's second wife . This broke up the household ; and hence it was that George tempted me so with the mountains . For he took his wife and children to an old manor-house in Berkshire , belonging to two maiden aunts of the lady , who promised to see to all that might happen , but wanted no gentleman in the house at a period of such delicacy . George Bowring , therefore , agreed to meet me on the 12th day of September , at the inn in Reading -- I forget its name -- where the Regulator coach -LRB- belonging to the old company , and leaving White Horse Cellars at half-past nine in the morning -RRB- allowed an hour to dine , from one o'clock onward , as the roads might be . And here I found him , and we supped at Oxford , and did very well at the Mitre . On the following morning we took coach for Shrewsbury , as we had agreed , and , reaching the town before dark , put up at the Talbot Inn , and sauntered into the dear old school , to see what the lads had been at since our time ; for their names and their exploits , at Oxford and Cambridge , are scored in large letters upon the panels , from the year 1806 and onward , so that soon there will be no place to register any more of them ; and we found that though we ourselves had done nothing , many fine fellows had been instituted in letters of higher humanity , and were holding up the old standard , so that we longed to invite them to dinner . But discipline must be maintained ; and that word means , more than anything else , the difference of men 's ages .