"Across Five Aprils" is Irene Hunt's novel about one family being torn apart by The Civil War. As the brothers in the family take opposing sides in the conflict, they wonder if they will ever be able to be a family again.
Another definition of "gumption" is "fortitude and determination"--while Jethro does not intend that here, because he wants to assure his father that the task would be easy, his mental strength and determination are later tested on his way home, when he, with Dave Burdow, is attacked in the woods.
“I know I kin do it, Pa. There’s nothin’ hard about it—jest keepin’ a level head and usin’
People were moving about their morning chores in barnyards or woodlots; inevitably they stood still, watching the approach of the wagon as it rattled down the road;
invariably they waved a hand in greeting and stood watching for a long time after Jethro passed, as if trying to guess whose team it was and whose boy was out on the road at such an early hour.
But there were people moving up and down the wooden sidewalks, smoke rising from two or three hundred chimneys, and for a boy accustomed to the loneliness of an isolated farm, the gentle
bustle of the place was exciting and full of wonder.
Compare this image of inconspicuous hunching to the image of untroubled assurance in a small hunched frame. Both images reveal how Jethro is still just a ten-year-old boy, despite taking on some of the responsibilities of a man.
He turned then to Jethro, who stood beside the counter, his body hunched together as if in an effort to make himself as
inconspicuous as possible.
When it curved among the trees and the Burdow cabin was lost to sight, he breathed easier and shifted himself stiffly on the seat as he prepared for the
ordeal of mudholes and jutting tree stumps in the road ahead.
of a quantity not able to fulfill a need or requirement
The use of "insufficiently" suggests that a child needs to know about violence in order to grow up. In Jethro's case, the attack on the bridge is his first close brush with violence, which helped him to learn "a great deal about men and their unpredictable behavior." Living through the war, losing his brothers, and saving Eb are other brushes with violence that change Jethro's outlook on life.
He was still too much a child, still insufficiently acquainted with violence, to believe that bodily harm could possibly come to him.
When he tried to speak he found that his voice, like his identity, had gone too; his lips worked as they had often seemed to work in a bad dream to form the words he wanted to say, but no sound passed them, and there was nothing to do but sit quietly while his mind
floundered in the uncertainties that beset it.
assail or attack on all sides: "The zebra was beset by leopards"
When he tried to speak he found that his voice, like his identity, had gone too; his lips worked as they had often seemed to work in a bad dream to form the words he wanted to say, but no sound passed them, and there was nothing to do but sit quietly while his mind floundered in the uncertainties that
a soft wet area of low-lying land that sinks underfoot
Now he was to know labor from dawn till sunset; he was to learn what it meant to scan the skies for rain while corn burned in the fields, or to see a heavy rainstorm lash grain from full, strong wheat stalks, or to know that hay, desperately needed for winter feeding, lay rotting in a wet
quagmire of a field.
the state of being weak in health or body (especially from old age)
Ed Turner must have been sharply aware of the look of
frailty about the boy in contrast to the great plow horses and the wide fields where Matt with his four boys and Shadrach Yale had worked only the year before.
dignified and somber in manner or character and committed to keeping promises
This might sound like an insulting criticism, but for Jethro, it is pleasant praise to be compared to a man who's twice his age and who is his teacher. Also, what Jenny was half-complaining, half-teasing about was that Jethro was not foolish enough to appreciate her humor.
“You and Shad air much alike, Jeth—too sober and
solemn fer yore own good.
difficult to detect or grasp by the mind or analyze
The difference in their ages seemed to have narrowed that spring, and subtly he stepped out of the role of a petted little brother and became a peer of Jenny, with the full rights of teasing or criticizing that had belonged to Tom a year ago.
showing respect for the rights or opinions or practices of others
When his sister left the table and ran off to her room with the letter, Jethro was irritated, but
tolerant of her rights; however, when she returned, with flaming cheeks, and began to read a few excerpts from the closely written pages, he was dismayed.