midnight
`` I think I 'd better stick to the street cars , '' Hodder said . His refusal was not ungraceful , but firm . Preston did not insist . In spite of the events of that evening , which he went over again and again as the midnight car carried him eastward , in spite of a new-born happiness the actuality of which was still difficult to grasp , Hodder was vaguely troubled when he thought of Preston Parr . The Bishop 's House was a comfortable , double dwelling of a smooth , bright red brick and large , plate-glass windows , situated in a plot at the western end of Waverley Place . It had been bought by the Diocese in the nineties , and was representative of that transitional period in American architecture when the mansard roof had been repudiated , when as yet no definite types had emerged to take its place . The house had pointed gables , and a tiny and utterly useless porch that served only to darken the front door , made of heavy pieces of wood fantastically curved .