nearly midnight
Pursuing these thoughts , and gasping as he went along , after his own peculiar fashion , Mr Quilp once more crossed the Thames , and shut himself up in his Bachelor 's Hall , which , by reason of its newly-erected chimney depositing the smoke inside the room and carrying none of it off , was not quite so agreeable as more fastidious people might have desired . Such inconveniences , however , instead of disgusting the dwarf with his new abode , rather suited his humour ; so , after dining luxuriously from the public-house , he lighted his pipe , and smoked against the chimney until nothing of him was visible through the mist but a pair of red and highly inflamed eyes , with sometimes a dim vision of his head and face , as , in a violent fit of coughing , he slightly stirred the smoke and scattered the heavy wreaths by which they were obscured . In the midst of this atmosphere , which must infallibly have smothered any other man , Mr Quilp passed the evening with great cheerfulness ; solacing himself all the time with the pipe and the case-bottle ; and occasionally entertaining himself with a melodious howl , intended for a song , but bearing not the faintest resemblance to any scrap of any piece of music , vocal or instrumental , ever invented by man . Thus he amused himself until nearly midnight , when he turned into his hammock with the utmost satisfaction . The first sound that met his ears in the morning -- as he half opened his eyes , and , finding himself so unusually near the ceiling , entertained a drowsy idea that he must have been transformed into a fly or blue-bottle in the course of the night , -- was that of a stifled sobbing and weeping in the room . Peeping cautiously over the side of his hammock , he descried Mrs Quilp , to whom , after contemplating her for some time in silence , he communicated a violent start by suddenly yelling out -- ` Halloa ! ' ` Oh , Quilp ! '