three o’clock in the afternoon
`` No , it 's certainly not like a Romany , '' remarked Madame Bulteel meaningly . Grey days in the prairie country do not come very often , but they are very depressing when they arrive . The landscape is not of the luscious kind ; it has no close correspondence with a picture by Corot or Constable ; sunlight is needed to give it the touch of the habitable and the homelike . It was , therefore , unfortunate for the spirits of the Lebanon people that the meeting summoned by local agitators to discuss with asperity affairs on both sides of the Sagalac should , while starting with fitful sunlight in the early morning , have developed to a bleak greyness by three o'clock in the afternoon , the time set for the meeting . Another strike was imminent in the factories at Manitou and in the railway-shops at Lebanon , due to the stupidity of the policy of Ingolby 's successor as to the railways and other financial and manufacturing interests . If he had planned a campaign of maladroitness he could not have more happily fulfilled his object . It was not a good time for reducing wages , or for quarrelling with the Town Councils of Manitou and Lebanon concerning assessments and other matters .