noon
Even with my ear against the panel , I could not catch a word . The men came just then to move the piano , and by the time we had taken it and the furniture up-stairs , the water was over the kitchen floor , and creeping forward into the hall . I had never seen the river come up so fast . By noon the yard was full of floating ice , and at three that afternoon the police skiff was on the front street , and I was wading around in rubber boots , taking the pictures off the walls . I was too busy to see who the Ladleys ' visitor was , and he had gone when I remembered him again . The Ladleys took the second-story front , which was empty , and Mr. Reynolds , who was in the silk department in a store across the river , had the room just behind . I put up a coal stove in a back room next the bathroom , and managed to cook the dinner there .