midnight
They petted me tenderly . My story was extracted by alternate leading questions from the old gentleman and timely caresses from the ladies . I could tell them everything except the name of the street where I lived . My midnight excursion from the house of my grandfather excited them chiefly ; also my having a mother alive who perpetually fanned her face and wore a ball-dress and a wreath ; things that I remembered of my mother . The ladies observed that it was clear I was a romantic child . I noticed that the old gentleman said ` Humph , ' very often , and his eyebrows were like a rook 's nest in a tree when I spoke of my father walking away with Shylock 's descendant and not since returning to me . A big book was fetched out of his library , in which he read my grandfather 's name .