six o'clock
So for an hour the Doctor sat in his daughter 's office by the window , sometimes giving attention to the drab flood of humanity passing along the street as the shifts changed for evening in the mines and smelters , and then listening to the day 's stragglers who came and went through his daughter 's office : A father for medicine for a child , a mother for advice , a breaker boy for a book , a little girl from the glass works for a bright bit of sewing upon which she was working , a woman from Violet Hogan 's room with a heartbreak in her problem , a group of women from little Italy with a complaint about a disorderly neighbor in their tenement , a cripple from the mines to talk over his career , whether it should be pencils or shoe strings , or a hand organ , or some attempt at handicraft ; the head of a local labor union paying some pittance to Laura , voted by the men to help her with her work ; a shy foreign woman with a badly spelled note from her neighbor , asking for flower seeds and directions translated by Laura into the woman 's own language telling how to plant the seeds ; a belated working mother calling for the last little tot in the nursery and explaining her delay . Laura heard them all and so far as she could , she served them all . The Doctor was vastly proud of the effective way in which she dispatched her work . It was six o'clock , but the summer sun still was high and the traffic in the street was thick . For a time , while a woman with a child with shriveled legs was talking to Laura about the child 's education , the Doctor sat gazing into the street . When the room was empty , he exclaimed , `` It 's a long weary way from the sunshine and prairie grass , child ! How it all has changed with the years !