midnight
His income , as he observed to his widowed sister and solitary companion almost daily in their privacy , was respectable . The descent from an altitude of fifty to five per cent . can not but be felt . Nevertheless it was a comforting midnight bolster reflection for a man , turning over to the other side between a dream and a wink , that he was making no bad debts , and one must pay to be addressed as esquire . Once an esquire , you are off the ground in England and on the ladder . An esquire can offer his hand in marriage to a lady in her own right ; plain esquires have married duchesses ; they marry baronets ' daughters every day of the week . Thoughts of this kind were as the rise and fall of waves in the bosom of the new esquire .