midnight
In Mr. Thurston and the Hawtreys the bridge habit and the supper habit , and what Billy Hawtrey called the Levitty habit , was so strong that it overrode their sense of loyalty to Major Markham . The impression created by Mrs. Dick Benham only heightened their enjoyment in doing every Friday what Mrs. Thurston and Mrs. Hawtrey persisted in regarding as a risky thing . `` There was no harm in Elise Levitt , '' they said . So every Friday , after midnight , respectable householders , sleeping on either side of the White House , were wakened by the sudden opening of her door , by shrill `` Good nights '' called out from the threshold and answered by bass voices up the street , by the shutting of the door and the shriek of the bolt as it slid to . And the Rector went about saying , in his genial way , that he liked Mrs. Levitt , that she was well connected , and that there was no harm in her . So long as any parishioner was a frequent attendant at church , and a regular subscriber to the coal and blanket club , and a reliable source of soup and puddings for the poor , it was hard to persuade him that there was any harm in them . Fanny Waddington said of him that if Beelzebub subscribed to his coal and blanket club he 'd ask him to tea .