midnight
Sabre once spent a week in the house , terminating a summer holiday a little earlier than Mabel , and he had formed the opinion that mother and son never went to bed at night and never got up in the morning . In remote hours and in remote quarters of the house mysterious sounds disturbed his sleep . Eerily peering over the banisters , he discerned the pair moving , like lost souls , about the passages , Mrs. Perch with the skirts of a red dressing-gown in one hand and a candle in the other , Young Perch disconsolately in her wake , yawning , with another candle . Young Perch called this `` Prowling about the infernal house all night '' ; and one office of the prowl appeared to Sabre to be the attendance of pans of milk warming in a row on oil stoves and suggesting , with the glimmer of the stoves and the steam of the pans , mysterious oblations to midnight gods . Mrs. Perch believed her son could do anything and , in the matter of his capabilities , had the strange conviction that he had only to write and ask anybody , from Mr. Asquith downwards , for employment in the highest offices in order to obtain it . Young Perch -- who used to protest , `` Well , but I 've _ got _ my work , Mother '' -- was in fact a horticulturist of very fair reputation . He specialised in sweet peas and roses ; and Sabre , in the early days of his intimacy with the Rod , Pole or Perch household , was surprised at the livelihood that could apparently be made by the disposal of seeds , blooms and cuttings .