nine o'clock in the morning
Life for the eager little girl moved quickly forward at its usual brisk pace , through several years to come . The public school to which the Marshall children went as soon as they were old enough was like any one of ten thousand public schools -- a large , square , many-windowed , extravagantly ugly building , once red brick , but long ago darkened almost to black by soft-coal smoke . About it , shaded by three or four big cottonwood-trees , was an inclosed space of perhaps two acres of ground , beaten perfectly smooth by hundreds of trampling little feet , a hard , bare earthen floor , so entirely subdued to its fate that even in the long summer vacation no spear of grass could penetrate its crust to remind it that it was made of common stuff with fields and meadows . School began at nine o'clock in the morning and , as a rule , three-fourths of the children had passed through the front gate twenty or thirty minutes earlier . Nobody knew why it should be considered such a hideous crime to be `` tardy , '' but the fact was that not the most reckless and insubordinate of the older boys cared to risk it . Any one of the four hundred children in any public school in the city preferred infinitely to be absent a day than to have the ghastly experience of walking through deserted streets -LRB- that is , with no children on them -RRB- , across the empty playground frighteningly unlike itself , into the long , desolate halls which , walk as cat-like as one might , resounded to the guilty footsteps with accusing echoes . And then the narrow cloakroom , haunted with limp , hanging coats and caps and hats , and finally the entry into the schoolroom , seated rank on rank with priggishly complacent schoolmates , looking up from their books with unfriendly eyes of blame at the figure of the late-comer .