midnight before
I wonder , after all , if Jim is not capable of being easily lined up -- when he sees how foolish I think he is ! '' And Jim ? He found himself hard to control that night . So much so that it was after midnight before he had finished work on a plan for a cooperative creamery . `` The boys can be given work in helping to operate it , '' he wrote on a tablet , `` which , in connection with the labor performed by the teacher , will greatly reduce the expense of operation . A skilled butter-maker , with slender white hands '' -- but he erased this last clause and retired . A distinct sensation ran through the Woodruff school , but the schoolmaster and a group of five big boys and three girls engaged in a very unclasslike conference in the back of the room were all unconscious of it .