midnight
I should have been collecting it . Thrice at a crisis I pawned my watch , and thrice I rallied and rescued it . But how am I to interest you in the details of such a career ? Now , if a fair countess had been so good as to slip on a piece of orange peel before my door , or if the chief merchant in the town had been saved by some tour-de-force upon my part , or if I had been summoned out at midnight to attend some nameless person in a lonely house with a princely fee for silence -- then I should have something worthy of your attention . But the long months and months during which I listened to the throb of the charwoman 's heart and the rustle of the greengrocer 's lungs , present little which is not dull and dreary . No good angels came my way . Wait a bit , though !