eleven o'clock
She had put up an equally determined fight against age , and it was only when the remorseless calendar proved her to be sixty-five that she resigned from the struggle , washed the dye out of her hair and the make-up from her face and retired to that old house . Not even then , however , did she resign from all activity and remain contented to sit with her hands in her lap and prepare herself for the next world . This one still held a certain amount of joy , and she concentrated all the vitality that remained with her to the perfect running of her house . At eleven o'clock every morning the tap of her stick on the polished floors was the signal of her arrival , and if every man and woman of the menage was not actively at work , she knew the reason why . Her tongue was still as sharp as the blade of a razor , and for sloppiness she had no mercy . Careless maids trembled before her tirades , and strong men shook in their shoes under her biting phrases . At seventy , with her snowy hair , little face that had gone into as many lines as a dried pippin , bent , fragile body and tiny hands twisted by rheumatism , she looked like one of the old women in a Grimm 's fairy tale who frightened children and scared animals and turned giants into cowards .