midnight
He was summoned home to meet Mr. Armstrong , a wealthy client , and as he was kept in consultation till a late hour , it happened that this was one of the nights on which Mr. Dempster went to bed tolerably sober . Thus the day , which had been one of Janets happiest , because it had been spent by her in helping her dear old friend Mrs. Crewe , ended for her with unusual quietude ; and as a bright sunset promises a fair morning , so a calm lying down is a good augury for a calm waking . Mr. Dempster , on the Thursday morning , was in one of his best humours , and though perhaps some of the good-humour might result from the prospect of a lucrative and exciting bit of business in Mr. Armstrong 's probable lawsuit , the greater part of it was doubtless due to those stirrings of the more kindly , healthy sap of human feeling , by which goodness tries to get the upper hand in us whenever it seems to have the slightest chance -- on Sunday mornings , perhaps , when we are set free from the grinding hurry of the week , and take the little three-year old on our knee at breakfast to share our egg and muffin ; in moments of trouble , when death visits our roof or illness makes us dependent on the tending hand of a slighted wife ; in quiet talks with an aged mother , of the days when we stood at her knee with our first picture-book , or wrote her loving letters from school . In the man whose childhood has known caresses there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues , and Mr. Dempster , whom you have hitherto seen only as the orator of the Red Lion , and the drunken tyrant of a dreary midnight home , was the first-born darling son of a fair little mother . That mother was living still , and her own large black easy-chair , where she sat knitting through the livelong day , was now set ready for her at the breakfast-table , by her son 's side , a sleek tortoise-shell cat acting as provisional incumbent . ` Good morning , Mamsey ! why , you 're looking as fresh as a daisy this morning .