six o'clock
And there was nothing in that town that was good for a soul to see . For it did not know that beauty was to be desired ; so it made many things by machinery , and became hurried in all its ways , and boasted its superiority over other cities and became richer and richer , and there was none to pity it . In this city Mary Jane had had lodgings found for her near the factory . At six o'clock on those November mornings , about the time that , far away from the city , the wildfowl rose up out of the calm marshes and passed to the troubled spaces of the sea , at six o'clock the factory uttered a prolonged howl and gathered the workers together , and there they worked , saving two hours for food , the whole of the daylit hours and into the dark till the bells tolled six again . There Mary Jane worked with other girls in a long dreary room , where giants sat pounding wool into a long thread-like strip with iron , rasping hands . And all day long they roared as they sat at their soulless work . But the work of Mary Jane was not with these , only their roar was ever in her ears as their clattering iron limbs went to and fro .