End of Chapter Four

  Jem retrieved the tire from the front of the Radley house steps, said it was mortifying for Scout to act like a girl, and then Calpurnia calls them for lemonade which was when he came up with the next activity he thinks they should do. He called their game "Boo Radley," Scout will be Mrs. Radley and all she had to do was sweep the porch, Dill was the late Mr. Radley and would cough whenever Jem spoke to him, and Jem would be Boo, he would go under the front steps and shrieked and howled from time to time. Over the summer they added more bits to their game, rumors such as that Mrs. Radley was beautiful before marrying Mr. Radley, and she cries all the time while Boo whittles away all the furniture in the house. While they were doing Chapter 15, Book Two of One Man's Family, they didn't see Atticus standing nearby. He asked them what they were doing, and why they had the scissors then if they weren't doing anything. Jem responds they weren't doing anything, and Atticus takes the scissors, and asks them if what they were doing had anything to do with the Radleys. Jem said again that they weren't doing anything, Atticus says he hopes they weren't, and heads back inside the house. Scout tell Jem she thinks that Atticus knows anyway that they were poking fun about the Radleys, which he then tells her that she was being a girl, and no one likes girls because they always imagine things. Scout hadn't wanted to play the games for two reasons, Atticus coming had been the second. The first had been the day she rolled into the Radley front yard in the tire. Through all the other noise and nausea, she had barely heard it, but inside the house, someone had been laughing.
  I thought it wasn't really nice of Jem to say those things to Scout about girls, that everyone hates them and they always imagine things and all. Half of the human population is female, and Scout is her own person, she can say whatever she wants. It also wasn't very kind of Jem to yell at her to retrieve the tire from the Radleys'' front yard when he was the one who pushed her to there in the first place. The last part of Chapter four had been a tad scary, because if Mr. Radley is dead, Nathan Radley isn't always in town, only Mrs. Radley and Boo are left in the house, and from what we know so far, Mrs. Radley doesn't seem to be one to laugh at little kids getting sick from rolling in tires. At the end of Chapter one, somebody in the house had flicked a shutter for a second, so we know Scout wasn't imagining someone laughing in the house.