noon
If they were moved during the day he was speechless with anger and did not recover his equilibrium for a week . The bank cashier was a little bully and was afraid of his daughter . She , he realized , knew the story of his brutal treatment of the girl 's mother and hated him for it . One day she went home at noon and carried a handful of soft mud , taken from the road , into the house . With the mud she smeared the face of the boards used for the pressing of trousers and then went back to her work feeling relieved and happy . Belle Carpenter occasionally walked out in the evening with George Willard , a reporter on the Winesburg Eagle . Secretly she loved another man , but her love affair , about which no one knew , caused her much anxiety .