midnight
`` Better leave this one there , too , '' was his parting counsel . Little Abe did not understand , but he took a firmer grip on his papa 's hand , and never let go all the way up the three long flights of stairs to the police nursery where the child at last found peace and a bottle . But when the matron tried to coax him to stay also , he screamed and carried on so that they were glad to let him go lest he wake everybody in the building . Though proverbially Police Headquarters never sleeps , yet it does not like to be disturbed in its midnight nap , as it were . It is human with the rest of us , that is how . Down in the marble-tiled hall little Abe and his father stopped irresolute . Outside it was dark and windy ; the snow , that had ceased falling in the evening , was swept through the streets on the northern blast .