To Kill a Mockingbird
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EnglishVoice Age
Child (5-12)Accents
North American (General) North American (US South)Transcript
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an excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Next morning, when I awakened, I found Jim and Dill in the backyard deep in conversation when I joined them as usual, they said, Go away. Will not this yards as much mine as it is yours. Jim Finch. I got Justus much right to play in. It is you have deal, and Jim emerged from a brief huddle. If you stay, you've got to do what we tell you. Deal warned. Well, I said, Who's so high and mighty all of a sudden? If you don't say, you'll do what we tell you, we ain't gonna tell you anything, Deal continued. You act like you grew 10 inches in the night. All right, what is it? Jim said placidly. We are going to give a note to Boo Radley. Just how I was trying to fight down the automatic terrorizing in me. It was all right for Miss Mahdi to talk. She was old and snug on her porch. It was different for us. Jim was merely going to put the note on the end of a fishing pole and stick it through the shutters. If anyone came along Dill would ring the bell. Deal raised his right hand in. It was my mother's silver dinner bill. I'm going around to the side of the house, said Jim. We looked yesterday from across the street, and there's a shudder loose. Think maybe I can make it stick on the window sill a least, Jim. And now you're in it and you can't get out of it. You'll just stay in it, Miss Priss. Okay? Okay. But I don't wanna watch Jim. Somebody was. Yes, you will. You'll watch the back end of the lot, and deal's gonna watch the front of the house and up the street. And if anybody comes, he'll ring the bell. That clear? All right, then what do you write him? Deal said we're asking him real politely to come out sometimes and tell us what he does in there. We said we wouldn't hurt him. And we by him an ice cream. You all have gone crazy. He'll kill us. Deal said it's my idea. I figure if he'd come out and sit a spell with us, he might feel better. How do you know he don't feel good? Well, how do you feel if you'd been shut up for 100 years with nothing but cats to eat. I bet he's got a beard down to here like your daddy's. Well, he ain't got a beard. He deal stopped as if trying to remember. Uh huh. Kochta. I said you said for you are off the train. Good. Your daddy had a black beard. If it's all the same to you. He shaved it off last summer. Yeah, and I've got the letter to prove it. He sent me $2 too. Keep on, I reckon. Heave. And since you a mounted police uniform that never showed up, did it? You just keep on telling him, son, Deal hairs could tell the biggest ones I ever heard. Among other things, he had been up in a mail plane 17 times. He had been to Nova Scotia. He had seen an elephant, and his granddaddy was Brigadier General Joe Wheeler and left him his sword. You all hush, said Jim. He scuttled beneath the house and came out with a yellow bamboo pole. I reckon this is long enough to reach from the sidewalk. Anybody who's brave enough to go up and touch the House had not to use a fishing pole. I said, Why don't you just knock the front door down? This is different, said Jim. How many times do I have to tell you? That deal took a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to Jim. The three of us walked cautiously toward the old House. Deal remained the light pole on the front center of the lot, and Jim and I edged down the sidewalk parallel to the side of the house. I walked beyond Jim and stood where I could see around the curve. All clear, I said. Not a soul inside, Jim looked up the sidewalk to Deal, who nodded. Jim attached the note to the end of the fishing pole, let the pull out across the yard and pushed it toward the window he had selected. The poll lacked several inches of being long enough, and Jim leaned over as far as he could. I watched him making Jabin motions for so long I abandoned my post and went to him. Can't get it off the pool, he muttered. Or if I get it off, I can't make it stay going back down. The Street scout. I returned and gazed around the curve at the empty road. Occasionally, I looked back at Jim, who was patiently trying to place the note on the window sill. It would flutter to the ground, and Jim would jab it up until I thought if Boo Radley ever received it, he wouldn't be able to read it. I was looking down the street when the dinner bell rang shoulder up, a real around the face, Boo Radley and his bloody things. Instead, I saw Dill ringing the bell with all his might in. Atticus is face. Jim looks so awful. I didn't have the heart to tell him, I told him. So he trudged along, dragging the pole behind him on the sidewalk.