Atticus Finch, the lawyer hero of the book, was telling his son, Jem, that he wouldn’t see the laws change before he died, and if Jem did, he’d be an old man. Maybe it was just the shock of her big brother marking up a library book, which was close to a sin in her young world. Maybe the memory would stick because the laws really were starting to change. Or it could just have been the way powerful words linger in a well-told story.
