midnight
`` Sorry , '' said Ida coldly ; `` I 've something else on . '' Worried as they were , nobody expected us to run away . How to let them know what had happened , and put a climax to their discomfiture , was the question . I solved it at last by telling Powell to come in at midnight with the sleeping medicine Carrie had given her for me . I knew , when she found I was not there , she would wait and at last raise the alarm . What I did not know was that she would come in half an hour early , and cut off our lead by thirty minutes . The evening dragged like the afternoon , and so thoroughly was the spice out of everything for them all , that when I went upstairs at ten-thirty Ida Elliott was singing Jim 's praises to Wilbur Bayne , and Carrie had got out the children 's photographs and was passing them round .