three o'clock
`` So I have been . Got back yesterday . Sorry I am back , to tell you the truth , '' and he glanced significantly towards the window . A fine , wetting drizzle was falling ; dozens of umbrellas passed to and fro outside ; the street lamps were lit , though it was barely three o'clock , and in the room that we were in the electric lights were switched on . The sky was the colour of street mud , through which the sun , a huge , blood-red disc , strove to pierce the depressing murk of London 's winter atmosphere , thereby creating a lurid and dismal effect . Jack Osborne is a man I rather like , in spite of the fact that his sole aim in life is to kill things . When he is n't shooting `` hippos '' and `` rhinos '' and bears and lions in out-of-the-way parts of the world , he is usually plastering pheasants in the home covers , or tramping the fields and moors where partridges and grouse abound .