five o'clock in the
morning
They had found out a fly-catcher 's nest in the ivy above the front door , and every evening the two children used to fetch out their father to watch the parent birds catching flies and carrying them to the hungry little ones , whom they could just hear chirping up above the ivy . Olly was wild to get the gardener 's ladder that he might climb up and look into the nest , but Mr. Norton would not have it lest it should frighten away the old birds . One delicious warm morning , too , the children had their long-promised bathe , and what fun it was . Nurse woke them up at five o'clock in the morning -- fancy waking up as early as that ! -- and they slipped on their little blue bathing gowns , and their sand shoes that mother had bought them in Cromer the year before , and then nurse wrapped them up in shawls , and she and they and father went down and opened the front door while everybody else in the house was asleep , and slipped out . What a quiet strange world it seemed , the grass and the flowers dripping with dew , and overhead such a blue sky with white clouds sailing slowly about in it . `` Why do n't we always get up at five o'clock , father ? ''