I thought we should stop playing “Boo Radley” because Atticus had warned us not to. Jem said we should just change the names of the characters and then nobody would know! Dill agreed.
Dill was being annoying. He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He had said I was the only girl he would ever love, but then he ignored me. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he kept becoming better friends with Jem.
Since Dill and Jem were becoming so close, I was beginning to feel left out. So I spent some time becoming friendly with Miss Maudie Atkinson. Miss Maudie was a nice lady who lived across the street. She had always let us play in her yard, but we had never really been close to her. Now Maudie hated being indoors. She thought that time spent indoors was time wasted. She was a widow who worked in her garden wearing an old straw hat and men’s overalls. She was pretty cool. She was honest, treated us with respect, and didn’t like gossip.
