midnight
Meanwhile it would enhance your enjoyment mightily to watch his physiognomy , the movements of his great , grey , shaggy head , the lightening and darkening of his eyes , his smile , his frown , his occasional slight shrug or gesture . But the oddest thing was this , that he could take as well as give ; he could listen -- surely a rare talent in a monologist . Indeed , I have never known a man who could make _ you _ feel so interesting . After dinner he would light an immense brown meerschaum pipe , and smoke for a quarter-hour or so in silence ; then he would play a game or two of chess with some one ; and by and by he would open his piano , and sing to us till midnight . I speak of him as old , and indeed we always called him Old Childe among ourselves ; yet he was barely fifty . Nina , when I first made her acquaintance , must have been a girl of sixteen or seventeen ; though -- tall , with an amply-rounded , mature-seeming figure -- if one had judged from her appearance , one would have fancied her three or four years older . For that matter , she looked then very much as she looks now ; I can perceive scarcely any alteration .