midnight
I could imagine but one escape from the difficulty , which was to provide myself with a clothes-brush , and , as my station was at the drawing-room door , to erase the numerals before their wearers entered . In this way I should escape the forfeiture of my credit , and the risk of maintaining it . I would willingly recall some of the strange incidents of that great occasion , but my mind can only dwell upon one , as , brush in hand , I asked permission to remove some accidental dust , -- a leave most graciously accorded , and ascribed to my town-bred habits of attention . At last -- it was nigh midnight , and for above an hour the company had received no accession to its ranks ; quadrilles had succeeded quadrilles , and the business of the scene went swimmingly on , -- all the time-honored events of similar assemblages happening with that rigid regularity which , if evening-parties were managed by steam , and regulated by a fly-wheel , could not proceed with more ordinary routine . `` Heads of houses '' with bald scalps led out simpering young boarding-school misses , and danced with a noble show of agility , to refute any latent suspicion of coming age . There were the usual number of very old people , who vowed the dancing was only a shuffling walk , not the merry movement they had practised half a century ago ; and there were lack-a-daisical young gentlemen , with waistcoats variegated as a hearth-rug , and magnificent breast-pins like miniature pokers , who lounged and lolled about , as though youth were the most embarrassing and wearying infliction mortality was heir to . There were , besides , all the varieties of the class young lady , as seen in every land where muslin is sold , and white shoes are manufactured .