five o'clock in the morning
It is not that the Harris children have the faintest notion of avoiding blame at the expense of a friend and comrade . One and all they are honesty itself in accepting responsibility for their own misdeeds . 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 . ''