four o'clock
But it is not so in America , where everybody reads and everybody thinks , where no one is stationary , no position permanent -- where the operative of to-day is the employer of to-morrow -- where many a girl steps from a position of toil and honorable self-support into that of mistress of a mansion , and is called to dispense a hospitality which in other lands would be called princely . In our as yet unsettled mode of existence , education is the one thing needful , because education is the only thing of which the `` chances and changes '' of life can not strip us -- the only thing which will adapt itself gracefully to any position , from the cottage and tenement-room to the presidential chair . Eunice and James Mountjoy had often talked over the loss of educational advantages to which boys and girls entering the mill at so early an age were of necessity subjected , and this winter they took their youngest sister into confidence . The result was the commencement of a `` night school , '' held , however , from four o'clock till seven . The mill was now only working three-quarters time , so these three hours remained to be filled up , and no one objected to putting off supper an hour for this purpose . The school-house did double duty -- the day scholars departing just as the more advanced classes assembled , and the trustees gladly gave the use of the building for so beneficent a purpose . But it was not to be expected that the poor young overworked teacher could do double duty too .