nine o'clock
She smiled at the sight of a decrepit long-handled wooden pump . She took a long breath of the smell of the month of May . Then she turned , with Aunt Lucile , to such practical matters as bedding , brooms and tea-kettles . There was more to do than a first look had led them to suppose , and their schemes grew ambitious , besides , as they advanced with them , so that , for all the Briarean prodigies of Bill , the odd-job man , they went to bed dog tired at nine o'clock that night with their labors not more than half complete . They slept -- Mary did , anyhow , the deepest sleep she had known in years . She waked at an unearthly -- a heavenly hour . The thin ether-cool air was quivering with the dissonance of bird calls ; the low sun had laid great slow-moving oblongs of reddish gilt upon the brown walls of the big room .