twelve o'clock at night
It had grown too heavy for her to lift ; it was better with Mrs. Hubbell , he said , and so to the inmates of the farmhouse Katy wrote that baby was not coming . They were bitterly disappointed , for Katy 's baby had been anticipated quite as much as Katy herself , Aunt Betsy bringing from the woodshed chamber a cradle which nearly forty years before had rocked the deacon 's only child , the little boy , who died just as he had learned to lisp his mother 's name . As a momento of those days the cradle had been kept , Katy using it sometimes for her kittens and her dolls , until she grew too old for that , when it was put away beneath the eaves whence Aunt Betsy dragged it , scouring it with soap and sand , until it was white as snow . But it would not be needed , and with a sigh the old lady carried it back , thinking `` things had come to a pretty pass when a woman who could dance and carouse till twelve o'clock at night was too weakly to take care of her child , '' and feeling a very little awe of Katy who must have grown so fine a lady . But all this passed away as the time drew near when Katy was to come , and no one seemed happier than Aunt Betsy on the morning when Whitey was eating his oats , and the carriage stood on the greensward . The sky above and the earth beneath were much as they were that other day when they were expecting Katy , but Helen 's face was not as bright , or her steps as buoyant . She could not forget who was there one year ago , and all the morning painful memories had been tugging at her heart as she remembered the past , and wondered at the gloomy silence which Mark Ray had maintained toward her ever since the day when the Seventh Regiment left New York , followed by so many prayers and tears .