six in the evening
And after a little while Ruhannah was able to nourish one of these obliging and responsive machines . And by July her cough had left her , and two delicate freckles adorned the bridge of her nose . The half-mile walk from and to Brookhollow twice a day was keeping her from rapid physical degeneration . Yet , like all northern American summers , the weather became fearfully hot in July and August , and the half-mile even in early morning and at six in the evening left her listless , nervously dreading the great concrete-lined room , the reek of glue and oil , the sweaty propinquity of her neighbours , and the monotonous appetite of the sprawling machine which she fed all day long with pasteboard squares . She went to her work in early morning , bareheaded , in a limp pink dress very much open at the throat , which happened to be the merciful mode of the moment -- a slender , sweet-lipped thing , beginning to move with grace now -- and her chestnut hair burned gold-pale by the sun . * * * * * There came that movable holiday in August , when the annual shutdown for repairs closed the mill and box factory during forty-eight hours -- a matter of prescribing oil and new bearings for the overfed machines so that their digestions should remain unimpaired and their dispositions amiable . It was a hot August morning , intensely blue and still , with that slow , subtle concentration of suspended power in the sky , ominous of thunder brooding somewhere beyond the western edges of the world .