midnight
`` Every time . I lived in a flat once , and it was an awful nuisance . Above me lived a dancing-master who gave lessons at every hour of the day in the room directly over my study , so that I was always being disturbed at my work , while below me was a music-teacher who was practising all night , so that I could hardly sleep . Worst of all , on the same floor with me was a miserable person of convivial tendencies , who always mistook my door for his when he came home after midnight , and who gave some quite estimable people two floors below to believe that it was I , and not he , who sang comic songs between three and four o'clock in the morning . There has not been too much love lost between the Idiot and myself , but I can not be so vindictive as to recommend him to live in a flat . '' `` I can bear testimony to the same effect , '' put in Mr. Brief , who was two weeks in arrears , and anxious to conciliate his landlady . `` Testimony to the effect that Mr. Pedagog sang comic songs in the early morning ? ''