It simply is, that is how the thing presents itself to their understanding.
When you explain to them that you had no original intention of getting up at five o'clock in the morning to play cricket on the croquet lawn, or to mimic the history of the early Church by shooting with a cross-bow at dolls tied to a tree; that as a matter of fact, left to your own initiative, you would have slept peacefully till roused in Christian fashion with a cup of tea at eight, they are firstly astonished, secondly apologetic, and thirdly sincerely contrite.

In the present instance, waiving the purely academic question whether the awakening of George at a little before five was due to natural instinct on his part, or to the accidental passing of a home-made boomerang through his bedroom window, the dear children frankly admitted that the blame for his uprising was their own.

As the eldest boy said: "We ought to have remembered that Uncle George had a long day, before him, and we ought to have dissuaded him from getting up.

I blame myself entirely." But an occasional change of habit does nobody any harm; and besides, as Harris and I agreed, it was good training for George.

In the Black Forest we should be up at five every morning; that we had determined on.
Indeed, George himself had suggested half-past four, but Harris and I had argued that five would be early enough as an average; that would enable us to be on our machines by six, and to break the back of our journey before the heat of the day set in.