The subject for the first hour was arithmetic.

Winona read over her paper slowly.

She felt capable of managing it, all except the last two problem sums, which were outside her experience.

She knew it would mainly be a question of accuracy.
"I'll work them each twice if I've only time," she thought, starting at number one.
An hour is after all only made up of sixty minutes, and these seemed to fly with incredible rapidity.

The teacher on the platform had sternly reproved a girl guilty of counting aloud in an agitated whisper, threatening instant expulsion for a repetition of such an offense, but with this solitary exception nobody transgressed the rules.