eight o'clock in the morning
This was one of Miss Wollaston 's minor crosses . The fact was that on the comparatively rare occasions when Doctor John himself was present for the family breakfast at the custom-consecrated hour , Paula managed about two times in five to put in a last-minute appearance . This was not what annoyed Miss Wollaston . She was broad-minded enough to be aware that to an opera singer , the marshaling of one 's whole family in the dining-room at eight o'clock in the morning might seem a barbarous and revolting practise and even occasional submissions to it , acts of real devotion . She was not really bitterly annoyed either by Paula 's oft repeated assertion that she always came to breakfast . Paula was one of those temperamental persons who have to be forgiven for treating their facts -- atmospherically . But that John , a man of science , enlisted under the banner of truth , should back this assertion of his wife 's , in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary , really required resignation to put up with ; argued a blindness , an infatuation , which seemed to his sister hardly decent .