noon
Mrs. Cutter put her handkerchief to her lips as if she were going to faint and said grandly : `` Mr. Cutter , you have broken all the Commandments -- spare the finger-bowls ! '' They quarreled from the moment Cutter came into the house until they went to bed at night , and their hired girls reported these scenes to the town at large . Mrs. Cutter had several times cut paragraphs about unfaithful husbands out of the newspapers and mailed them to Cutter in a disguised handwriting . Cutter would come home at noon , find the mutilated journal in the paper-rack , and triumphantly fit the clipping into the space from which it had been cut . Those two could quarrel all morning about whether he ought to put on his heavy or his light underwear , and all evening about whether he had taken cold or not . The Cutters had major as well as minor subjects for dispute . The chief of these was the question of inheritance : Mrs. Cutter told her husband it was plainly his fault they had no children .