Order

Mr. Woodlawn fixes machines, including those most delicate instruments: clocks. Caddie picks up his skill with clocks. Mr. Woodlawn’s sense of order extends beyond physical clocks, into a sense of the order of the world, a belief the world should make sense. Caddie shares that as well.

Personal Responsibility

Caddie often sidesteps her parent’s restrictions — not exactly breaking the rules, but bending them pretty far. The three children cross the river, for example, suspecting their mother has not forbidden it only because she thinks them incapable of doing it. Then Caddie and Warren take Betsy to meet Uncle Edmund at the landing. The children are never punished for that kind of transgression, because they take responsibility for what happens to themselves. When Caddie falls in the frozen water, her brothers pull her out; when they have to plow the field, the field gets plowed. Personal responsibility...