It was outrageous , thought thirteen-year-old Jem . Mother had more sense . `` I 'm NOT little any more , Mother , '' he had cried indignantly , on his eighth birthday . `` I 'm AWFUL big . '' Mother had sighed and laughed and sighed again ; and she never called him Little Jem again -- in his hearing at least . He was and always had been a sturdy , reliable little chap . He never broke a promise . He was not a great talker . His teachers did not think him brilliant , but he was a good , all-round student . He never took things on faith ; he always liked to investigate the truth of a statement for himself . Once Susan had told him that if he touched his tongue to a frosty latch all the skin would tear off it . Jem had promptly done it , `` just to see if it was so . '' He found it was `` so , '' at the cost of a very sore tongue for several days . But Jem did not grudge suffering in the interests of science . By constant experiment and observation he learned a great deal and his brothers and sisters thought his extensive knowledge of their little world quite wonderful . Jem always knew where the first and ripest berries grew , where the first pale violets shyly wakened from their winter 's sleep , and how many blue eggs were in a given robin 's nest in the maple grove . He could tell fortunes from daisy petals and suck honey from red clovers , and grub up all sorts of edible roots on the banks of the pond , while Susan went in daily fear that they would all be poisoned . He knew where the finest spruce-gum was to be found , in pale amber knots on the lichened bark , he knew where the nuts grew thickest in the beechwoods around the Harbour Head , and where the best trouting places up the brooks were . He could mimic the call of any wild bird or beast in Four Winds and he knew the haunt of every wild flower from spring to autumn . Walter Blythe was sitting under the White Lady , with a volume of poems lying beside him , but he was not reading .
He was gazing now at the emerald-misted willows by the XXXXX , and now at a flock of clouds , like little silver sheep , herded by the wind , that were drifting over Rainbow Valley , with rapture in his wide splendid eyes .
banks berries cost fortunes hearing observation pond sorts student winter