about three o'clock
He had lived much apart from his kind , but he had a mind that fastened upon a thought and worked it down until it was an axiom . He felt how shallow was this thin , flaunting woman of flounces and cheap rouge ; he saw her sniff at the brown sugar - she had always had white at the hotel ; and he noted that she let Rodney 's mother clear away and wash the dinner things herself . He felt the little crack of doom before it came . It came about three o'clock . He did not return to the rye-field after dinner , but stayed and waited to hear what Rodney had to say . Rodney did not tell his little story well , for he foresaw trouble in the old home ; but he had to face this and all coming dilemmas as best he might . With a kind of shamefacedness , yet with an attempt to carry the thing off lightly , he told Uncle Jim , while , inside , his wife told the old mother , that the business of the hotel had gone to pot -LRB- he did not say who was the cause of that -RRB- , and they were selling out to his partner and coming to live on the farm .