midnight
` Thank you , Meyrick , thank you , and God bless you ! Do n't imagine I will forget a word you have said to me . ' The Rector shook the hand he held warmly twice over , a gentle smile passed over Meyrick 's aging face , and they parted . That night it fell to Robert to sit up after midnight with John Allwood , the youth of twenty whose case had been a severer tax on the powers of the little nursing staff than perhaps any other . Mother and neighbors were worn out , and it was difficult to spare a hospital nurse for long together from the diphtheria cases . Robert , therefore , had insisted during the preceding week on taking alternate nights with one of the nurses . During the first hours before midnight he slept soundly on a bed made up in the ground-floor room of the little sanatorium .