midday
She therefore went for their old stanch ally Mrs. Wheaton , who returned with her and wrought such miracles as the wretched place permitted of . In just foreboding she shook her head over the prospects of her friends in such a neighborhood , for her experienced eyes enabled her to gauge very correctly the character of the people who lived across the hall and in the upper and lower stories . They were chiefly ignorant and debased Irish families , and the good woman 's fears were not wholly due to race antipathy . In the tenement from which they came , the people , although poor , were in the main stolid , quiet , and hard-working , but here on every side were traces and hints , even at midday , of degraded and vicious lives . The classes in the tenements appear to have a moral gravity or affinity which brings to the same level and locality those who are alike , and woe be to aliens who try to dwell among them . The Jocelyns did not belong to the tenement classes at all , and Mrs. Wheaton correctly feared that the purgatory which was the corner-stone in their neighbors ' creeds would be realized in the temporal experience of the Southern family . Now that the step had been taken , however , she concealed her anxieties , and did her best to avoid collisions with the burly , red-faced women and insolent children whose officious offers of help were but thin veils to a coarse curiosity and a desire for petty pilfering .