three o'clock
It was a dismal , gloomy sort of hole , and spoony couples seemed to scent it out by instinct , and would spend hours there over a pot of tea and assorted pastry . `` Idyllic , '' some folks would have thought it : I used to get the fair dismals watching it . There was one girl -- a weird-looking creature , with red eyes and long thin hands , that gave you the creeps to look at . She 'd come in regular with her young man , a pale-faced nervous sort of chap , at three o'clock every afternoon . Theirs was the funniest love-making I ever saw . She 'd pinch him under the table , and run pins into him , and he 'd sit with his eyes glued on her as if she 'd been a steaming dish of steak and onions and he a starving beggar the other side of the window . A strange story that was -- as I came to learn it later on .