seven
o'clock in the morning
But Jurgis declared that from this to ceasing to come at all would not be a very long step , and so it was decided that Vilimas and Nikalojus should return to school in the fall , and that instead Elzbieta should go out and get some work , her place at home being taken by her younger daughter . Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor , prematurely made old ; she had to take care of her little brother , who was a cripple , and also of the baby ; she had to cook the meals and wash the dishes and clean house , and have supper ready when the workers came home in the evening . She was only thirteen , and small for her age , but she did all this without a murmur ; and her mother went out , and after trudging a couple of days about the yards , settled down as a servant of a `` sausage machine . '' Elzbieta was used to working , but she found this change a hard one , for the reason that she had to stand motionless upon her feet from seven o'clock in the morning till half-past twelve , and again from one till half-past five . For the first few days it seemed to her that she could not stand it -- she suffered almost as much as Jurgis had from the fertilizer , and would come out at sundown with her head fairly reeling . Besides this , she was working in one of the dark holes , by electric light , and the dampness , too , was deadly -- there were always puddles of water on the floor , and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room . The people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature , whereby the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of snow in the winter , and the chameleon , who is black when he lies upon a stump and turns green when he moves to a leaf .