three o'clock
`` Thursday -- Thursday -- help me to live till Thursday ! '' But he had n't to live till Thursday -- he was destined to see her not later than the next afternoon . You know with what abruptness , with how brief a warning , storms will spring from the blue , in that land of lakes and mountains . It was three o'clock or thereabouts ; and Peter was reading in his garden ; and the whole world lay basking in unmitigated sunshine . Then , all at once , somehow , you felt a change in things : the sunshine seemed less brilliant , the shadows less solid , less sharply outlined . Oh , it was very slight , very uncertain ; you had to look twice to assure yourself that it was n't a mere fancy . It seemed as if never so thin a gauze had been drawn over the face of the sun , just faintly bedimming , without obscuring it .