noon
Outside , the watching boys in the shadow of the church disappointedly vanished , cheated of their small and grewsome excitement , when they saw the doctor quietly walk towards his house and realized that there was to be no ambulance and no hospital . `` Gee ! I 've had knocks harder 'n that , and never said nothin ' about it , '' said one boy as he scurried away with the others towards his home in the high tenement-house . It was quite early the next morning when Charlotte received the telegram that her father had had a fall on the ice , was not badly injured , and would be home on the noon train . Anderson had gone very early to the telegraph-office . It was being ticked off in Andrew Drake 's drug-store when he inquired , and the boy viewed him with intense curiosity when he took the message , but did not dare ask any questions . Anderson hurried home with it to Charlotte , who was not yet up .