ten o'clock
With him they went the rounds of squalid tenements , hideous back alleys , and repulsive shanties , the tattered children gazing at them with faces in which curiosity was mingled with aversion , and their frousy parents giving them looks of enmity and mistrust , no doubt because they were so clean and well dressed . But apparently noting nothing of this , Mr. McMaster led the way from one rookery to another , introducing his new workers to their wretched inhabitants with an easy grace that disarmed all suspicion , and made them feel that so long as he was the presiding genius of the school , they had nothing to fear in the worst locality . The following Sunday morning they began work on their own account . The school was held at ten o'clock , closing just in time to permit the teachers to get to church , and the part assigned to Bert and Frank was to go out into the highways and byways , and invite the children playing in the dirt to come to the school , or else to go to the homes , if such they could be called , of those whose names were already upon the roll , and secure their attendance at the service . Then when the school opened they found plenty to do , distributing the hymn books , helping in the singing , keeping a sharp look-out for unruly behaviour , watching the door lest any scholar should take it into his head to bolt , insuring an equitable division of the picture papers , and so on until the hour came to close the school , and they turned their steps churchward , feeling with good reason that they had really been doing work for God , and hard work , too . They soon grew to love Mr. McMaster as much as they admired his zeal . He was in many ways a quaint , curious character .