seven o'clock
`` It 's me to trail and shut up Tuttle . He 'll be here , if I have to bring him in an ambulance . '' That 's why I jumps out before closin ' time and mingles with the Jersey commuters in a lovely hot ride across the meadows . It 's a scrubby station where I gets off , too ; one of these fact ` ry settlements where the whole population answers the seven o'clock whistle every mornin ' . There 's a brick barracks half a mile long , where they make sewin ' machines or something , and snuggled close up around it is hundreds of these four-fam ` ly wooden tenements , gettin ' the full benefit of the soft coal smoke and makin ' it easy for the hands to pike home for a noon dinner . Say , you talk about the East Side double deckers ; but they 're brownstone fronts compared to some of these corporation shacks across the meadows ! Seventeen dirty kids led me to the number Tuttle gave me , and in the right hand first floor kitchen I finds a red faced woman in a faded blue wrapper fryin ' salt pork and cabbage .