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Jem heard me. He thrust his head around the co
Jem took me to his room and put me in bed beside him. “Try to go to sleep,” he said, “It’ll be all over after tomorrow, maybe.”
We had come in quietly, so as not to wake Aunty. Atticus killed the engine in the driveway and coasted to the carhouse; we went in the back door and to our rooms without a word. I was very tired, and was drifting into sleep when the memory of Atticus calmly folding his newspaper and pushing back his hat became Atticus standing in the middle of an empty waiting street, pushing up his glasses. The full meaning of the night’s events hit me and I began crying. Jem was awfully nice about it: for once he didn’t remind me that people nearly nine years old didn’t do things like that.
Everybody’s appetite was delicate this morning, except Jem’s: he ate his way through three eggs. Atticus watched in frank admiration; Aunt Alexandra sipped coffee and radiated waves of disapproval. Children who slipped out at night were a disgrace to the family. Atticus said he was right glad his disgraces had come along, but Aunty said, “Nonsense, Mr. Underwood was there all the time.”
“You know, it’s a fu
Local opinion held Mr. Underwood to be an intense, profane little man, whose father in a fey fit of humor christened Braxton Bragg, a name Mr. Underwood had done his best to live down. Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.
Calpurnia was serving Aunt Alexandra more coffee, and she shook her head at what I thought was a pleading wi
She waited until Calpurnia was in the kitchen, then she said, “Don’t talk like that in front of them.”
“Talk like what in front of whom?” he asked.
“Like that in front of Calpurnia. You said Braxton Underwood despises Negroes right in front of her.”
“Well, I’m sure Cal knows it. Everybody in Maycomb knows it.”
I was begi
“I don’t think it’s a good habit, Atticus. It encourages them. You know how they talk among themselves. Every thing that happens in this town’s out to the Quarters before sundown.”
My father put down his knife. “I don’t know of any law that says they can’t talk. Maybe if we didn’t give them so much to talk about they’d be quiet. Why don’t you drink your coffee, Scout?”
I was playing in it with the spoon. “I thought Mr. Cu
“He still is.”
“But last night he wanted to hurt you.”
Atticus placed his fork beside his knife and pushed his plate aside. “Mr. Cu
Jem spoke. “Don’t call that a blind spot. He’da killed you last night when he first went there.”
“He might have hurt me a little,” Atticus conceded, “but son, you’ll understand folks a little better when you’re older. A mob’s always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cu
“I’ll say not,” said Jem.
“So it took an eight-year-old child to bring ‘em to their senses, didn’t it?” said Atticus. “That proves something — that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children... you children last night made Walter Cu
Well, I hoped Jem would understand folks a little better when he was older; I wouldn’t. “First day Walter comes back to school’ll be his last,” I affirmed.
“You will not touch him,” Atticus said flatly. “I don’t want either of you bearing a grudge about this thing, no matter what happens.”
“You see, don’t you,” said Aunt Alexandra, “what comes of things like this. Don’t say I haven’t told you.”
Atticus said he’d never say that, pushed out his chair and got up. “There’s a day ahead, so excuse me. Jem, I don’t want you and Scout downtown today, please.”
As Atticus departed, Dill came bounding down the hall into the diningroom. “It’s all over town this morning,” he a
Aunt Alexandra stared him to silence. “It was not a hundred folks,” she said, “and nobody held anybody off. It was just a nest of those Cu
“Aw, Aunty, that’s just Dill’s way,” said Jem. He signaled us to follow him.
“You all stay in the yard today,” she said, as we made our way to the front porch.
It was like Saturday. People from the south end of the county passed our house in a leisurely but steady stream.
Mr. Dolphus Raymond lurched by on his thoroughbred. “Don’t see how he stays in the saddle,” murmured Jem. “How c’n you stand to get drunk ‘fore eight in the morning?”
A wagonload of ladies rattled past us. They wore cotton sunbo
Mr. X Billups rode by on a mule and waved to us. “He’s a fu
As the county went by us, Jem gave Dill the histories and general attitudes of the more prominent figures: Mr. Tensaw Jones voted the straight Prohibition ticket; Miss Emily Davis dipped snuff in private; Mr. Byron Waller could play the violin; Mr. Jake Slade was cutting his third set of teeth.
A wagonload of unusually stern-faced citizens appeared. When they pointed to Miss Maudie Atkinson’s yard, ablaze with summer flowers, Miss Maudie herself came out on the porch. There was an odd thing about Miss Maudie — on her porch she was too far away for us to see her features clearly, but we could always catch her mood by the way she stood. She was now standing arms akimbo, her shoulders drooping a little, her head cocked to one side, her glasses winking in the sunlight. We knew she wore a grin of the uttermost wickedness.
The driver of the wagon slowed down his mules, and a shrill-voiced woman called out: “He that cometh in vanity departeth in darkness!”
Miss Maudie answered: “A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance!”
I guess that the foot-washers thought that the Devil was quoting Scripture for his own purposes, as the driver speeded his mules. Why they objected to Miss Maudie’s yard was a mystery, heightened in my mind because for someone who spent all the daylight hours outdoors, Miss Maudie’s command of Scripture was formidable.