noon
Because his total acquaintance with children of his own age had been among the slum kids that hung around Jake Caslow 's Place , Jimmy found his new companions an interesting bunch . He watched them , and he listened to them . He copied them and in two weeks Jimmy found them pitifully lacking and hopelessly misinformed . They could not remember at noon what they had been told at ten o'clock . They had difficulty in reading the simple pages of the First Reader . But he swallowed his pride and stumbled on and on , mimicking his friends and remaining generally unnoticed . If written examinations were the rule in the First Grade , Jimmy would have been discovered on the first one .