Why did George find very few people in the streets as he rushed out to work in the morning?

The narrator tells us this story in Chapter XI of Three Men in Boat. George is reminded of a time when his watch stopped overnight, and he didn’t know what time it was when he woke up the next morning. The hands on his watch read “quarter-past eight,” and George believed he would be late to get to work at nine o’clock. It was a foggy night, but George was convinced it was morning....

The narrator tells us this story in Chapter XI of Three Men in Boat. George is reminded of a time when his watch stopped overnight, and he didn’t know what time it was when he woke up the next morning. The hands on his watch read “quarter-past eight,” and George believed he would be late to get to work at nine o’clock. It was a foggy night, but George was convinced it was morning. He was surprised that no one else in the house was awake for breakfast. Then he walked out onto the dark and gloomy street, and no one was there, either. His watch began to work again. But it said that it was close to nine o’clock; and when a nearby clock struck three, it turned out to be three o’clock in the morning. George went back home and found that he could not go back to bed and could not really start eating breakfast. Instead he just sat in a corner and waited until his landlady got up to begin the day with their usual routine.