five o'clock
She had been passively watching the excited faces of people hurling themselves down-hill on toboggans , but now she was herself poised on the crest of the slope , tense with an excitement not only more real , but somehow more vital to the scheme of things , than that felt by other people who had made the thrilling trip before her . She lay still for a few moments , luxuriating in the innocent egotism of this view of her future , which was none the less absorbing for being so entirely unterrifying , and then sprang up , impatient to begin it . No one else in the house was awake . She saw with surprise that it was barely five o'clock . She wondered that she felt so little sleepy , since she had been up late the night before . All the family and connections had gathered , and she had talked with an eager breathlessness and had listened as eagerly to pick up all those details of home news which do not go into letters ; those insignificant changes and events that make up the physiognomy of an existence , without which one can not again become an integral part of a life once familiar . It had been a fatiguing , illuminating evening .