eight o'clock
All around and about her , inexorable as anesthesia , horrid as the hush of tomb or public library , lurked the painfully unmistakable sense of institutional restraint . Mournfully to her ear from some remote kitcheny region of pots and pans a browsing spoon tinkled forth from time to time with soft-muffled resonance . Up and down every clammy white corridor innumerable young feet , born to prance and stamp , were creeping stealthily to and fro in rubber-heeled whispers . Along the somber fire-escape just below her windowsill , like a covey of snubbed doves , six or eight of her classmates were cooing and crooning together with excessive caution concerning the imminent graduation exercises that were to take place at eight o'clock that very evening . Beyond her dreariest ken of muffled voices , beyond her dingiest vista of slate and brick , on a far faint hillside , a far faint streak of April green went roaming jocundly skyward . Altogether sluggishly , as though her nostrils were plugged with warm velvet , the smell of spring and ether and scorched mutton-chops filtered in and out , in and out , in and out , of her abnormally jaded senses . Taken all in all it was not a propitious afternoon for any girl as tired and as pretty as the White Linen Nurse to be considering the general phenomenon of anything -- except April !