To Kill A Mockingbird Chapters 1-10

Lastly, we were to stay away from that house until we were invited there, we were not to play an asinine game he had seen us playing or make fun of anybody on this street or in this town.

"Gracious child, I was raveling a thread, wasn't even thinking about your father, but now that I am I'll say this: Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.

Jem arbitrated, awarded me first push with an extra time for Dill, and I folded myself inside the tire.

It was obstreperous, disorderly and abusive -"
"You gonna give me a chance to tell you?

But by the end of August our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions, and it was then that Dill gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.

She had always been too hard on me, she had at last seen the error of her fractious ways, she was sorry and too stubborn to say so.

The back of the Radley house was less inviting than the front: a ramshackle porch ran the width of the house; there were two doors and two dark windows between the doors.

Boo's transition from the basement toback home was nebulous in Jem's memory

Jem decided there was no point in quibbling, and was silent.

"Ain't got no mother," was the answer, "and their paw's right contentious."

When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.

Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom

"I'm afraid our activities would be received with considerable disapprobation by the more learned authorities."

The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb.

Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.

Uncle Jack instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn't interested in guns.

So Simon, having forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens.

Atticus kept us in fits that evening, gravely reading columns of print about a man who sat on a flagpole for no discernible reason, which was reason enough for Jem to spend the following Saturday aloft in the treehouse.

Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with his palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray was successful.

Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was that we could play on her lawn, eat her scuppernongs if we didn't jump on the arbor, and explore her vast back lot, terms so generous we seldom spoke to her, so careful were we to preserve the delicate balance