midnight
`` Only twenty-five hundred dollars a month ! Why , my dear Henriette , if it were twenty-five hundred clam-shells a century I could n't help you pay a day 's rental , I am that strapped . Until this afternoon I had n't seen thirty cents all at once for nigh on to six months . I have been so poor that I 've had to take my morning coffee at midnight from the coffee-wagons of the New York , Boston , and Chicago sporting papers . In eight months I have not tasted a table-d'hôte dinner that an expert would value at fifteen cents net , and yet you ask me to help you pay twenty-five hundred dollars a month rent for a Newport palace ! You must be mad . '' `` You are the same loquacious old Bunny that you used to be , '' said Mrs. Raffles , sharply , yet with a touch of affection in her voice .