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railroad tracks in Mobile? Cara Clinton was a good soul, and she had a sad life, and it was a sad thing, but you think about marrying the product of such a union. It’s a solemn thought.”
    A solemn thought indeed. Jean Louise saw the glint of gold-rimmed spectacles slung across a sour face looking out from under a crooked wig, the twitter of a bony finger. She said:
“The question, gentlemen—is one of liquor;
You ask for guidance—this is my reply:
He says, when tipsy, he would thrash and kick her,
Let’s make him tipsy, gentlemen, and try!”
    Alexandra was not amused. She was extremely annoyed. She could not comprehend the attitudes of young people these days. Not that they needed understanding—young people were the same in every generation—but this cockiness, this refusal to take seriously the gravest questions of their lives, nettled and irritated her. Jean Louise was about to make the worst mistake of her life, and she glibly quoted those people at her, she mocked her. That girl should have had a mother. Atticus had let her run wild since she was two years old, and look what he had reaped. Now she needed bringing up to the line and bringing up sharply, before it was too late.
    “Jean Louise,” she said, “I would like to remind you of a few facts of life. No”—Alexandra held out her hand for silence—“I’m quite sure you know those facts already, but there are a few things you in your wisecracking way don’t know, and bless goodness I’m going to tell you. You are as innocent as a new-laid egg for all your city living. Henry is not and never will be suitable for you. We Finches do not marry the children of rednecked white trash, which is exactly what Henry’s parents were when they were born and were all their lives. You can’t call them anything better. The only reason Henry’s like he is now is because your father took him in hand when he was a boy, and because the war came along and paid for his education. Fine a boy as he is, the trash won’t wash out of him.
    “Have you ever noticed how he licks his fingers when he eats cake? Trash. Have you ever seen him cough without covering his mouth? Trash. Did you know he got a girl in trouble at the University? Trash. Have you ever watched him pick at his nose when he didn’t think anybody was looking? Trash—”
    “That’s not the trash in him, that’s the man in him, Aunty,” she said mildly. Inwardly, she was seething. Give her a few more minutes and she’ll have worked herself into a good humor again. She can never be vulgar, as I am about to be. She can never be common, like Hank and me. I don’t know what she is, but she better lay off or I’ll give her something to think about—
    “—and to top it all, he thinks he can make a place for himself in this town riding on your father’s coattails. The very idea, trying to take your father’s place in the Methodist Church, trying to take over his law practice, driving all around the country in his car. Why, he acts like this house was his own already, and what does Atticus do? He takes it, that’s what he does. Takes it and loves it. Why, all of Maycomb’s talking about Henry Clinton grabbing everything Atticus has—”
    Jean Louise stopped running her fingers around the lip of a wet cup on the sink. She flicked a drop of water off her finger onto the floor and rubbed it into the linoleum with her shoe.
    “Aunty,” she said, cordially, “why don’t you go pee in your hat?”
    THE RITUAL ENACTED on Saturday nights between Jean Louise and her father was too old to be broken. Jean Louise walked into the livingroom and stood in front of his chair. She cleared her throat.
    Atticus put down the Mobile Press and looked at her. She turned around slowly.
    “Am I all zipped up? Stocking seams straight? Is my cowlick down?”
    “Seven o’clock and all’s well,” said Atticus. “You’ve been swearing at your aunt.”
    “I have not.”
    “She told me you had.”
    “I was crude,