four o'clock in the afternoon
His evil-smelling pipe between his lips , he would sit , stocking-footed , in silence , smoking and thinking vague , formless , surly thoughts . This sullen unrest and rebellion it was that , transmitted to his son , had made Buzz the unruly braggart that he was , and which , twenty or thirty years hence , would find him just such a one as his father -- useless , evil-tempered , half brutal , defiant of order . It was in May , a fine warm sunny day , that Ma Werner , looking up from the garden patch where she was spading , a man 's old battered felt hat perched grotesquely atop her white head , saw Buzz lounging homeward , cutting across lots from Bates Street , his dinner pail glinting in the sun . It was four o'clock in the afternoon . Ma Werner straightened painfully and her over-flushed face took on a purplish tinge . She wiped her moist chin with an apron-corner . As Buzz espied her his gait became a swagger .