five minutes
to ten
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 . All sat quietly absorbed in their work , and an occasional rustle of paper or scratch of a pen were the only sounds audible . At precisely five minutes to ten the deity on the platform sounded a bell , and ordered papers to be put together . She collected them , handed them to another mistress , then without any break proceeded to deal out the questions for the next hour 's examination . This was in geography , and here Winona was not on such sure ground . Granted that you are acquainted with certain rules in arithmetic , it is always possible to work out problems , but it needed more knowledge than she possessed to write answers to the riddles that confronted her .