six o'clock
`` Anything is good business that gets by , '' remarked Miss Murphy , who had a philosophy . `` I must go indoors or this wind will blow all my puffs away . '' She departed breezily ; and Gabriella , returning to the workroom , spent her afternoon patiently stitching flat garlands of flowers on the brim of a hat . When she left the house at six o'clock the April weather was so lovely that she decided to walk all the way home ; and while she moved rapidly with the crowd in Fifth Avenue , she considered anxiously the possible disastrous results of Madame 's anger . Between her and absolute want there stood only her salary , and she had deliberately -- she realized now how deliberate her reply had been -- undermined that thin and insecure protection . Though she was now earning as much as thirty dollars a week , an illness of a year ago , when she had been obliged to stop work for several months , had exhausted the remains of the modest nest egg with which she had started ; and to lose her place , she knew , would mean either starvation or beggary . There was no one , with the exception of Cousin Jimmy , of whom she could beg , and to beg of him would be a tacit confession that she had failed as a breadwinner .