five o'clock in the afternoon
She said them over and over , the sound of them was horrifying to her , but in her heart she did not believe them . Her mother , _ her _ mother could not die ! There was no one , of course , at the La Chance station to meet her , and she walked out through the crowd and took the street-car without having seen a familiar face . It was five o'clock in the afternoon then , and six when she walked up the dusty country road and turned in through the gate in the hedge . There was home -- intimately a part of her in every detail of its unforgotten appearance . The pines stood up strong in their immortal verdure , the thick golden hush of the summer afternoon lay like an enchantment about the low brown house . And something horrible , unspeakably horrible had happened there .