twenty-five minutes to eleven
If he had n't happened to be going up the street and she to be coming down it , the thing would n't have happened . Afterwards they both admitted that it was one of the most peculiar coincidences they ever heard of . Pupkin owned that he had had the strangest feeling that morning as if something were going to happen -- a feeling not at all to be classed with the one of which he had once spoken to Miss Lawson , and which was , at the most , a mere anticipation of respect . But , as I say , Pupkin met Zena Pepperleigh on the 26th of June , at twenty-five minutes to eleven . And at once the whole world changed . The past was all blotted out . Even in the new forty volume edition of the `` Instalment Record of Humanity '' that Mallory Tompkins had just received -- Pupkin would n't have bothered with it .