midnight
The mother brought them once a week -- a big bundle which she carried home on her head -- to have the buttons put on , fourteen on each pair , the bottoms turned up , and a ribbon sewed fast to the back seam inside . That was called finishing . When work was brisk -- and it was not always so since there had been such frequent strikes in Stanton Street -- they could together make the rent money , and even more , as Paolo was learning and getting a stronger grip on the needle week by week . The rent was six dollars a month for a dingy basement room , in which it was twilight even on the brightest days , and a dark little cubbyhole where it was always midnight , and where there was just room for a bed of old boards , no more . In there slept Paolo with his uncle ; his mother made her bed on the floor of the `` kitchen , '' as they called it . The three made the family . There used to be four ; but one stormy night in winter Paolo 's father had not come home .