'What!'I cried, and I jumped out of bed. I woke Harris and told him.

It was Mrs Poppets who woke me the next morning. She said,'Do you know that it's nearly nine o'clock, sir?'

'I did,'I answered.

'Well, why didn't you wake me then?'he asked. 'Now we won't be on the water until after twelve o'clock. '

He said,'I thought you told us to get up at six?'

'Wh…aa…t,'he began.

Finally, we were ready and Harris said,'We need a good breakfast inside us today. 'While we were eating, George got the newspaper and read us interesting pieces from it -- pieces about people who had been killed on the river, and interesting reports about the weather. The weather report for that day said,'Rain, cold, wet to fine, some thunder, and an east wind'. But weather reports make me angry anyway. They always tell you what the weather was like yesterday, or the day before. It is never tooday's weather. It is always wrong. I remember that one autumn I went on holiday…

Then we began to get ready, and we remembered that we had packed the toothbrushes. So we had to go downstairs to get them out of the suitcase.

Then we remembered. We looked at George. He was still asleep. Now, it makes me very angry when I see another man asleep and I am awake. We decided to wake George. We ran across the room, and we pulled the bedclothes off him. Harris hit him with a shoe, and I shouted in his ear. He woke up.

'Get up, you fat, lazy thing!'Harris shouted. 'It's a quarter to ten!'

And we laughed. Then we sat down by the fire and read our books.

'Well, it will rain this afternoon, then,'we told ourselves.

'Ah,'we said, as we watched them,'they'll be very wet when they come back, though. '

At twelve o'clock the room was too hot, and the sun was still shining.

The next morning, we read that it was going to be sunny and very hot. So we dressed in light clothes, and we went out. Half an hour later, it began to rain hard, and a very cold wind blew up. And this went on all day. We came home with colds, and we went to bed…

The rain never came.

But on the morning of our holiday it was bright and sunny, and George could not make us unhappy. So he went to work.

Harris and I finished the rest of the breakfast. Then we carried all our luggage into the road. We tried to get a taxi. Usually taxis come along every three minutes. In fact, there are usually too many taxis. However, that morning we waited twenty minutes for a taxi. A crowd of interested people collected to watch us. I think it was because we had so much luggage. There was a big suitcase, a small bag, two baskets, several blankets, some fruit in a brown paper bag, some pans, some umbrellas and four or five coats and raincoats. After a very long time, a taxi arrived and stopped for us. We packed our things into it, kicked two of Montmorency's friends out of the taxi, and started on our holiday The crowd of peopel waved goodbye to us.

On that holiday, the weather reports in the newspaper were always wrong. on Monday it said,'Heavy rain, with thunder'. So we did not go out that day. All day people passed our house. They were all going out, happy and smiling. The sun was shining and there were no clouds in the sky.