To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee (Chapter 3–part 2)

we saw him round the post office corner in the distance. Atticus seemed to have
forgotten my noontime fall from grace; he was full of questions about school. My
replies were monosyllabic and he did not press me.
Perhaps Calpurnia sensed that my day had been a grim one: she let me watch her
fix supper. “Shut your eyes and open your mouth and I’ll give you a surprise,” she
said.
It was not often that she made crackling bread, she said she never had time, but
with both of us at school today had been an easy one for her. She knew I loved
crackling bread.
“I missed you today,” she said. “The house got so lonesome ‘long about two
o’clock I had to turn on the radio.”
“Why? Jem’n me ain’t ever in the house unless it’s rainin‘.”
“I know,” she said, “But one of you’s always in callin‘ distance. I wonder how
much of the day I spend just callin’ after you. Well,” she said, getting up from the
kitchen chair, “it’s enough time to make a pan of cracklin‘ bread, I reckon. You
run along now and let me get supper on the table.”
Calpurnia bent down and kissed me. I ran along, wondering what had come over
her. She had wanted to make up with me, that was it. 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. I was weary from the day’s crimes.
After supper, Atticus sat down with the paper and called, “Scout, ready to read?”
The Lord sent me more than I could bear, and I went to the front porch. Atticus
followed me.
“Something wrong, Scout?”
I told Atticus I didn’t feel very well and didn’t think I’d go to school any more if
it was all right with him.
Atticus sat down in the swing and crossed his legs. His fingers wandered to his
watchpocket; he said that was the only way he could think. He waited in amiable
silence, and I sought to reinforce my position: “You never went to school and you
do all right, so I’ll just stay home too. You can teach me like Granddaddy taught
you ‘n’ Uncle Jack.”“No I can’t,” said Atticus. “I have to make a living. Besides, they’d put me in jail
if I kept you at home—dose of magnesia for you tonight and school tomorrow.”
“I’m feeling all right, really.”
“Thought so. Now what’s the matter?”
Bit by bit, I told him the day’s misfortunes. “-and she said you taught me all
wrong, so we can’t ever read any more, ever. Please don’t send me back, please
sir.”
Atticus stood up and walked to the end of the porch. When he completed his
examination of the wisteria vine he strolled back to me.
“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot
better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you
consider things from his point of view-”
“Sir?”
“-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Atticus said I had learned many things today, and Miss Caroline had learned
several things herself. She had learned not to hand something to a Cunningham,
for one thing, but if Walter and I had put ourselves in her shoes we’d have seen it
was an honest mistake on her part. We could not expect her to learn all
Maycomb’s ways in one day, and we could not hold her responsible when she
knew no better.
“I’ll be dogged,” I said. “I didn’t know no better than not to read to her, and she
held me responsible—listen Atticus, I don’t have to go to school!” I was bursting
with a sudden thought. “Burris Ewell, remember? He just goes to school the first
day. The truant lady reckons she’s carried out the law when she gets his name on
the roll-” “You can’t do that, Scout,” Atticus said. “Sometimes it’s better to bend
the law a little in special cases. In your case, the law remains rigid. So to school
you must go.”
“I don’t see why I have to when he doesn’t.”
“Then listen.”
Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations.
None of them had done an honest day’s work in his recollection. He said that some Christmas, when he was getting rid of the tree, he would take me with him
and show me where and how they lived. They were people, but they lived like
animals. “They can go to school any time they want to, when they show the
faintest symptom of wanting an education,” said Atticus. “There are ways of
keeping them in school by force, but it’s silly to force people like the Ewells into
a new environment-”
“If I didn’t go to school tomorrow, you’d force me to.”
“Let us leave it at this,” said Atticus dryly. “You, Miss Scout Finch, are of the
common folk. You must obey the law.” He said that the Ewells were members of
an exclusive society made up of Ewells. In certain circumstances the common
folk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple method of
becoming blind to some of the Ewells’ activities. They didn’t have to go to
school, for one thing. Another thing, Mr. Bob Ewell, Burris’s father, was
permitted to hunt and trap out of season.
“Atticus, that’s bad,” I said. In Maycomb County, hunting out of season was a
misdemeanor at law, a capital felony in the eyes of the populace.
“It’s against the law, all right,” said my father, “and it’s certainly bad, but when a
man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying
from hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who begrudges
those children any game their father can hit.”
“Mr. Ewell shouldn’t do that-”
“Of course he shouldn’t, but he’ll never change his ways. Are you going to take
out your disapproval on his children?”
“No sir,” I murmured, and made a final stand: “But if I keep on goin‘ to school,
we can’t ever read any more…”
“That’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir.”
When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face that always
made me expect something. “Do you know what a compromise is?” he asked.
“Bending the law?”
“No, an agreement reached by mutual concessions. It works this way,” he said. “If you’ll concede the necessity of going to school, we’ll go on reading every night
just as we always have. Is it a bargain?”
“Yes sir!”
“We’ll consider it sealed without the usual formality,” Atticus said, when he saw
me preparing to spit.
As I opened the front screen door Atticus said, “By the way, Scout, you’d better
not say anything at school about our agreement.”
“Why not?”
“I’m afraid our activities would be received with considerable disapprobation by
the more learned authorities.”
Jem and I were accustomed to our father’s last-will-and-testament diction, and we
were at all times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our
understanding.
“Huh, sir?”
“I never went to school,” he said, “but I have a feeling that if you tell Miss
Caroline we read every night she’ll get after me, and I wouldn’t want her after
me.”
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 sat from after
breakfast until sunset and would have remained overnight had not Atticus severed
his supply lines. I had spent most of the day climbing up and down, running
errands for him, providing him with literature, nourishment and water, and was
carrying him blankets for the night when Atticus said if I paid no attention to him,
Jem would come down. Atticus was right.