eight o'clock at night
Marah Rocke was a very hard-working woman , sewing all day long and knitting through the twilight , and then again resuming her needle by candle-light and sewing until midnight -- and yet Marah Rocke made but a poor and precarious living for herself and son . Needlework , so ill-paid in large cities , is even worse paid in the country towns , and , though the cottage hearth was never cold , the widow 's meals were often scant . Lately her son , Traverse , who occasionally earned a trifle of money by doing `` with all his might whatever his hand could find to do , '' had been engaged by a grocer in the town to deliver his goods to his customers during the illness of the regular porter ; for which , as he was only a substitute , he received the very moderate sum of twenty-five cents a day . This occupation took Traverse from home at daybreak in the morning , and kept him absent until eight o'clock at night . Nevertheless , the widow always gave him a hot breakfast before he went out in the morning and kept a comfortable supper waiting for him at night . It was during this last social meal that the youth would tell his mother all that had occurred in his world outside the home that day , and all that he expected to come to pass the next , for Traverse was wonderfully hopeful and sanguine . And after supper the evening was generally spent by Traverse in hard study beside his mother 's sewing-stand .