midnight
`` Au reservoir , '' he said . `` Back again soon ! '' * * * * * It was late that night when Miss Mapp felt that she was physically incapable of tacking on a single poppy more to the edge of her skirt , and went to the window of the garden-room where she had been working , to close it . She glanced up at the top story of her own house , and saw that the lights in the servants ' rooms were out : she glanced to the right and concluded that her gardener had gone to bed : finally , she glanced down the street and saw with a pang of pleasure that the windows of the Major 's house showed no sign of midnight labour . This was intensely gratifying : it indicated that her influence was at work in him , for in response to her wish , so often and so tactfully urged on him , that he would go to bed earlier and not work so hard at night , here was the darkened window , and she dismissed as unworthy the suspicion which had been aroused by the red-currant fool . The window of his bedroom was dark too : he must have already put out his light , and Miss Mapp made haste over her little tidyings so that she might not be found a transgressor to her own precepts . But there was a light in Captain Puffin 's house : he had a less impressionable nature than the Major and was in so many ways far inferior .