It was not that my uncle did not rise early enough; it was that troubles came to him at the last moment. The first thing he would do after breakfast would be to lose his newspaper. We always knew when Uncle Podger had lost anything, by the expression of astonished indignation with which, on such occasions, he would regard the world in general. It never occurred to my Uncle Podger to say to himself: "I am a careless old man. I lose everything: I never know where I have put anything. I am quite incapable of finding it again for myself. In this respect I must be a perfect nuisance to everybody about me. I must set to work and reform myself." On the contrary, by some peculiar course of reasoning, he had convinced himself that whenever he lost a thing it was everybody else's fault in the house but his own. "I had it in my hand here not a minute ago!" he would exclaim. From his tone you would have thought he was living surrounded by conjurers, who spirited away things from him merely to irritate him. "Could you have left it in the garden?" my aunt would suggest. "What should I want to leave it in the garden for? I don't want a paper in the garden; I want the paper in the train with me." "You haven't put it in your pocket?" "God bless the woman! Do you think I should be standing here at five minutes to nine looking for it if I had it in my pocket all the while? Do you think I'm a fool?" Here somebody would explain, "What's this?" and hand him from somewhere a paper neatly folded. "I do wish people would leave my things alone," he would growl, snatching at it savagely. He would open his bag to put it in, and then glancing at it, he would pause, speechless with sense of injury. "What's the matter?" aunt would ask. "The day before yesterday's!" he would answer, too hurt even to shout, throwing the paper down upon the table. If only sometimes it had been yesterday's it would have been a change. But it was always the day before yesterday's; except on Tuesday; then it would be Saturday's. We would find it for him eventually; as often as not he was sitting on it. And then he would smile, not genially, but with the weariness that comes to a man who feels that fate has cast his lot among a band of hopeless idiots. "All the time, right in front of your noses--!" He would not finish the sentence; he prided himself on his self-control. This settled, he would start for the hall, where it was the custom of my Aunt Maria to have the children gathered, ready to say good-bye to him. My aunt never left the house herself, if only to make a call next door, without taking a tender farewell of every inmate. One never knew, she would say, what might happen.