ten o'clock
On mild summer evenings she would come down stairs with her head wrapped in a pink knitted `` nubia , '' and stroll back and forth along the gravelled walk , her gaunt figure passing into the dusk of the cedar avenue and emerging like the erratic shadow of one of the sombre trees . Sometimes Eugenia joined her , but Bernard , her favourite , held shyly aloof . In her exercise she seldom spoke , and her words were peevish ones , but there was grim pathos in her carriage as she moved slowly back and forth between the straight rows of box . After supper the family assembled on the porch and talked in a desultory way until ten o'clock , when the lights were put out and the house retired to rest . Eugenia slept in a great , four-post bedstead with Aunt Chris , and the bed was so large and soft and billowy that she seemed to lose herself suddenly at night in its lavender-scented midst , and to be as suddenly discovered in the morning by Rindy , the house-girl , when she came with her huge pails of warm water . Those fresh summer dawns of Eugenia 's childhood became among her dearest memories in after years . There were hours when , awaking , wide-eyed , before the house was astir , she would rise on her elbow and look out across the dripping lawn , where each dewdrop was charged with opalescent tints , to the western horizon , where the day broke in a cloud of gold .