midnight
`` Happy , little girl ? '' `` Very happy , lover . '' Caroline Paine was having the time of her life . She wore a new dress of thin midnight blue which Randy had bought for her and which was very becoming ; her hair was waved and dressed , and she had Major Prime as an attentive listener while she talked of the past and linked it with the present . `` Of course there was a time when the men drank themselves under the tables . Everybody calls them the ` good old times , ' but I reckon they were bad old times in some ways , were n't they ? There was hot blood , and there were duels .