midnight
Presently there would be the sound of his heavy feet on the floor of the bedroom above and he would get into bed to lie beside Rosalind 's mother . The night noises of her father 's house had been in some way terrible to the girl in the years when she was becoming a woman . After chance had taken her to the city she never wanted to think of them again . Even in Chicago where the silence of nights was cut and slashed by a thousand noises , by automobiles whirling through the streets , by the belated footsteps of men homeward bound along the cement sidewalks after midnight , by the shouts of quarreling men drunk on summer nights , even in the great hubbub of noises there was comparative quiet . The insistent clanging noises of the city nights were not like the homely insistent noises of her father 's house . Certain terrible truths about life did not abide in them , they did not cling so closely to life and did not frighten as did the noises in the one house on the quiet street in the town of Willow Springs . How often , there in the city , in the midst of the great noises she had fought to escape the little noises !