about midnight
At the end of my first week I found I had made ten shillings . I was delighted , but after I had paid for my room and my food there was not enough for baby 's board , so the second week I worked later in the evenings , and earned fourteen shillings . This was still insufficient , therefore I determined to take something from the other end of the day . `` Morning will be better , '' I thought , remembering the painful noises at night , especially about midnight , when people were being thrown out of a public-house higher up the street , where there was a placard in the window saying the ale sold there could be guaranteed to `` make anybody drunk for fourpence . '' Unfortunately -LRB- being a little weak -RRB- I was always heavy in the mornings , but by great luck my room faced the east , so I conceived the idea of moving my bed up to the window and drawing my blinds to the top so that the earliest light might fall on my face and waken me . This device succeeded splendidly , and for many weeks of the late summer and early autumn I was up before the sun , as soon as the dawn had broadened and while the leaden London daylight was filtering through the smoke of yesterday . By this means I increased my earnings to sixteen shillings , and , as my fingers learned to fly over their work , to seventeen and even eighteen .