nine
o'clock
`` I 'd rather die than be dependent all my life , and I 'm going to earn my living if I have to break rocks to do it . '' Supper was over , and Gabriella , still in the dress she had worn all day , was picking up the children 's clothes from the floor of her room . According to Mrs. Carr 's hereditary habit in sorrow or sickness , Jane had been served in bed with tea and toast , while several small hard cots had been brought down from the attic and arranged in the available space in the two bedrooms . As Gabriella looked at the sleeping children , who had kicked the covering away , and lay with round rosy limbs gleaming in the lamplight , she remembered that Arthur Peyton was coming at nine o'clock to take her to Florrie 's party , and she told herself with grim determination that she would never go to a party again . The Berkeley conscience , that vein of iron which lay beneath the outward softness and incompetence of her mother and sister , held her , in spite of her tempting youth , to the resolution she had made . She had told Jimmy that she meant to earn her living if she had to break rocks to do it , and Gabriella , like Pussy , came of a race that `` did not easily change its mind . '' Turning to the bureau , she smoothed out the children 's hair ribbons and pinned them , in two tight little blue and pink rolls , to the pincushion .