midnight
Jimmie hurried off to Comrade Meissner , who had bought a house and was paying instalments on it ; Meissner , being a Socialist , did not try to fleece him , but was glad to have help in making his payments . There were no partitions in the garret which Jimmie rented , but they would hang curtains and make do somehow , and Lizzie would use Mrs. Meissner 's stove until they could get something fixed upstairs . And then to the corner grocery , to borrow a hand-cart and get started at moving the furniture ; for to-morrow everybody would be moving , and you would not be able to get anything on wheels for love or money . Until after midnight Jimmie and Meissner worked at transporting babies and bedding and saucepans and chairs and chicken-coops piled on the hand-cart . And next morning at the shop , more excitement ! It was four years now that Jimmie had been in the employ of old man Granitch , and in all that time he had done but one thing ; standing in a vast room amid a confusion of whirling belts and wheels , a roar and screech and grumble and whirl that completely annulled one of the five senses . There came in front of him , mechanically propelled , a tray full of small oblong blocks of steel , which he fed , one with each hand , into two places in a machine ; the machine took these blocks , and rounded off one end , and ground the rest a little smaller , and put a thread on it , and it dropped into a tray on the other side , a bolt .