midnight
As usual , Evan came to the rescue , as we sat in the den the night before our departure . `` Let us turn tables on Miss Lavinia this time and take her to see our New York , '' he said , `` since we are all quite tired of hers . Do you remember the time when we went to town to buy the trappings for the boys ' first tree and were detained until Christmas morning by the delay of a cable I had to wait for ? After dinner Christmas Eve we coaxed Miss Lavinia out with us and bought half a bushel of jolly little toys from street fakirs to take home , and then boarded an elevated train and rode about the city until after midnight , in and out the downtown streets and along the outskirts , to see all the poor people 's Christmas trees in the second stories of tenements , cheap flats , and over little shops . How she enjoyed it , and said that she never dreamed that tenement people could be so happy ; and she finally waxed so enthusiastic that she gave a silver half dollar each to four little newsboys crouching over the steam on a grating in Twenty-third Street , and when they cheered her and a policeman came along , we told the dear old soul that he evidently thought her a suspicious character , a counterfeiter at the very least . And she always spoke afterward with bated breath on the dangers of the streets late at night , and her narrow escape from arrest . We came to New York unsated and without responsibilities to push us , and looked from the outside in .