Chapter 6/7: Explain Jem’s statement: “When I went back they were folded across the fence… like they were expectin’ me.” (Madison)

When Jem goes back for his pants in the middle of the night he is met with them folded and sewn, meaning someone must have found them and fixed them up for Jem knowing he’d come back to retrieve them. Right before Jem leaves the house, Scout is begging him not go because she is well aware of Nathan Radley’s threat to shoot anything that moves in his yard again. However, Jem would rather risk his life getting his pants, than have Atticus be angry with him when his pants are found the next morning. Jem is scared when he finds the pants waiting for him because it means someone knew he was coming back, “Like somebody was reading my mind… like somebody could tell what I was gonna do. Can’t anybody tell what I’m gonna do lest they know me, can they, Scout?” (Lee 66). Jem held off sharing his concerns with Scout up until this point, but later on in the chapter the two of them discovering that someone is leaving things for them in the knothole by the Radley’s yard. Here, he realizes for the first time that someone has been watching them. Jem states that someone was expecting him with the pants fixed and folded on the fence, something he hadn’t been ready for or expecting. This is the first scene where the reader begins to suspect that Boo Radley is keeping on eye on these kids. Later on in the chapter, Nathan Radley cements up the knothole which Jem and Scout had been using to communicate with whomever was leaving them gifts. He claimed the tree was dying, but Atticus soon disproved Nathan’s excuse. Boo Radley is the only other person still living on that property who could have been putting gifts in the knothole for the children to find. When Jem said “like they were expectin’ me” (Lee 66) he was referring to whoever had taken the liberty to fold his breeches and lay them out for him. Boo is expecting them to come back more and play in his yard, Nathan just doesn’t like the attention.

What will Jem and Scout do with the letter they wrote to the person who keeps leaving them treasures in the knothole? Are they beginning to suspect Nathan after what he said about the tree being dead? What is Atticus’s angle when he proves the tree is clearly still alive but then backs down saying Nathan knows the trees on his property better than Atticus himself would?