midnight
His son clapped him on the shoulder when he suggested this notion , and said he was the same old father ; and they got home as gayly together as the dispiriting influences of the New York ugliness would permit . It was still in those good and decent times , now so remote , when the city got something for the money paid out to keep its streets clean , and those they passed through were not foul but merely mean . The ignoble effect culminated when they came into Broadway , and found its sidewalks , at an hour when those of any European metropolis would have been brilliant with life , as unpeopled as those of a minor country town , while long processions of cable-cars carted heaps of men and women up and down the thoroughfare amidst the deformities of the architecture . The next morning the March family breakfasted late after an evening prolonged beyond midnight in spite of half-hourly agreements that now they must really all go to bed . The children had both to recognize again and again how well their parents were looking ; Tom had to tell his father about the condition of ` Every Other Week ' ; Bella had to explain to her mother how sorry her husband was that he could not come on to meet them with her , but was coming a week later to take her home , and then she would know the reason why they could not all , go back to Chicago with him : it was just the place for her father to live , for everybody to live . At breakfast she renewed the reasoning with which she had maintained her position the night before ; the travellers entered into a full expression of their joy at being home again ; March asked what had become of that stray parrot which they had left in the tree-top the morning they started ; and Mrs. March declared that this was the last Silver Wedding Journey she ever wished to take , and tried to convince them all that she had been on the verge of nervous collapse when she reached the ship . They sat at table till she discovered that it was very nearly eleven o'clock , and said it was disgraceful .