five
o'clock
Nor was there anything literary in the things that Una copied for the editorial department ; just painfully handwritten accounts of the meeting of the Southeastern Iowa Auto-dealers ' Association ; or boasts about the increased sales of Roadeater Tires , a page originally smartly typed , but cut and marked up by the editors . Lists and letters and items , over and over ; sitting at her typewriter till her shoulder-blades ached and she had to shut her eyes to the blur of the keys . The racket of office noises all day . The three-o'clock hour when she felt that she simply could not endure the mill till five o'clock . No interest in anything she wrote . Then the blessed hour of release , the stretching of cramped legs , and the blind creeping to the Subway , the crush in the train , and home to comfort the mother who had been lonely all day . Such was Una 's routine in these early months of 1906 .