four o'clock
`` Will you ever be talking ? '' she said with grave reproach , and left him to the care of Mrs. Basset , whose comfortable and stolid personality did not stimulate his imagination . She had a strong desire to explore that city of which she had yet seen so little , and her patient being now arrived at a state of his disorder when it was best for him to be tempted to prolonged slumbers by silence and solitude , she put on her hood and gloves and went out alone to see the horrors of the deserted streets , of which nurse Basset had given her so appalling a picture . It was four o'clock , and the afternoon was at its hottest ; the blue of a cloudless sky was reflected in the blue of the silent river , where , instead of the flotilla of gaily painted wherries , the procession of gilded barges , the music and song , the ceaseless traffic of Court and City , there was only the faint ripple of the stream , or here and there a solitary barge creeping slowly down the tide with ineffectual sail napping in the sultry atmosphere . That unusual calm which had marked this never-to-be-forgotten year , from the beginning of spring , was yet unbroken , and the silent city lay like a great ship becalmed on a tropical ocean ; the same dead silence ; the same cruel , smiling sky above ; the same hopeless submission to fate in every soul on board that death-ship . How would those poor dying creatures , panting out their latest breath in sultry , airless chambers , have welcomed the rush of rain , the cool freshness of a strong wind blowing along those sun-baked streets , sweeping away the polluted dust , dispersing noxious odours , bringing the pure scents of far-off woodlands , of hillside heather and autumn gorse , the sweetness of the country across the corruption of the town . But at this dreadful season , when storm and rain would have been welcomed with passionate thanksgiving , the skies were brass , and the ground was arid and fiery as the sands of the Arabian desert , while even the grass that grew in the streets , where last year multitudinous feet had trodden , sickened as it grew , and faded speedily from green to yellow .