midnight
The first great question to be settled , and it is a very great question with a young man , was that of latch-key or no latch-key . Mrs. Richards , the landlady , when she made ready the third bedroom for the young gentleman , would , as was her wont in such matters , have put a latch-key on the toilet-table as a matter of course , had she not had some little conversation with Mamma Tudor regarding her son . Mamma Tudor had implored and coaxed , and probably bribed Mrs. Richards to do something more than ` take her son in and do for him ' ; and Mrs. Richards , as her first compliance with these requests , had kept the latch-key in her own pocket . So matters went on for a week ; but when Mrs. Richards found that her maidservant was never woken by Mr. Charley 's raps after midnight , and that she herself was obliged to descend in her dressing-gown , she changed her mind , declared to herself that it was useless to attempt to keep a grown gentleman in leading-strings , and put the key on the table on the second Monday morning . As none of the three men ever dined at home , Alaric and Norman having clubs which they frequented , and Charley eating his dinner at some neighbouring dining-house , it may be imagined that this change of residence did our poor navvy but little good . It had , however , a salutary effect on him , at any rate at first . He became shamed into a quieter and perhaps cleaner mode of dressing himself ; he constrained himself to sit down to breakfast with his monitors at half-past eight , and was at any rate so far regardful of Mrs. Richards as not to smoke in his bedroom , and to come home sober enough to walk upstairs without assistance every night for the first month .