five o'clock
He seldom looked at her directly , or for longer than an instant , and more rarely still did he speak to her except as a reply . What few remarks he ventured upon his own initiative nearly all concerned the landscape , which he commended repeatedly in a weak voice , as `` kind of pretty , '' though once he said he guessed there might be bugs in the bark of a log on which they sat ; and he became so immoderately personal as to declare that if the bugs had to get on anybody he 'd rather they got on him than on Milla . She said that was `` just perfectly lovely '' of him , asked where he got his sweet nature , and in other ways encouraged him to continue the revelation , but Ramsey was unable to get forward with it , though he opened and closed his mouth a great many times in the effort to do so . At five o'clock everybody was summoned again to the rendezvous for a ceremony preliminary to departure : the class found itself in a large circle , standing , and sang `` The Star Spangled Banner . '' Ordinarily , on such an open-air and out-of-school occasion , Ramsey would have joined the chorus uproariously with the utmost blatancy of which his vocal apparatus was capable ; and most of the other boys expressed their humour by drowning out the serious efforts of the girls ; but he sang feebly , not much more than humming through his teeth . Standing beside Milla , he was incapable of his former inelegancies and his voice was in a semi-paralyzed condition , like the rest of him . Opposite him , across the circle , Dora Yocum stood a little in advance of those near her , for of course she led the singing .