midnight
`` It is always my pleasure to be with you , my Gouverneur , and I do like that you command me , '' I said to him in answer to that gentleness that had something of a sad longing in it -- for that custard pie of Madam Taylor , I suppose , of which he had probably heard famous mention , but which I would have believed to have been a longing for Roberta , Marquise of Grez and Bye , if I had heard it so spoken , with an English or Russian or French accent , to me in a robe of tulle or sheer linen . `` And may I not return immediately after that supper to that Club of Old Hickory for conversation with you and my Uncle , the General Robert ? '' I asked with eagerness . `` Boy , by the time you have eaten that fatted pie at the Taylors ' and danced at least a portion of it off of your system I 'll be -- be burning the midnight oil going over the papers in the case of Timms . I want to weigh all the testimony carefully in the case given in Court about his own and his brother 's relations with the woman Mary Brown . As long as I am the Governor of the State of Harpeth , no honest man is going to swing for protecting a good woman from the outrages of a brute . And yet Timms confessed the crime and denied the motive .