At once Daddy and Grandpa set to work on the Reo. It was an "orphan" car, no longer made, and its parts were hard to replace; so the men were always watching the junkyards for other old Reos. They had learned a great deal about the car in these months, and they soon had it on the road again.

"Give you long enough," said Grandma, "and you'll cobble new soles on its tires and patch its innards. Looks like it's held together with hairpins now."

Daddy drove with one ear cocked for trouble, and when anyone spoke to him he said, "Shh! Sounds like her pistons--or maybe it's her vacuum. Anyway, as soon as there's a good stopping place, we'll. . . ."

But it was the tires that gave out first. Bang! Daddy's muscles bulged as he held the lurching car steady. One of the back tires was blown to bits. "Now can we eat?" Dick demanded. Daddy shook his head as he jumped out to jack up the car. "Got to keep moving. This is our last spare, and there isn't a single tire we can count on."

Sure enough, they hadn't gone far before the familiar bumping stopped them. That last spare was flat.

"Now," Daddy said grimly, "you may as well get lunch while I see whether I can patch this again."

Grandma had been sitting silent, her hand twisted in Sally's little skirt to keep her from climbing over the edge. "Well," she said, "you better eat before your hands get any blacker. Dick, you haul that shoe-box from under the seat. Rose-Ellen, fetch the crackers from the trailer. Sally, do sit still one minute."

"Crackers?" asked Rose-Ellen, when she had scrambled back. "I don't see a one, Gramma."

"Land's sakes, child, use your eyes for once!" Rose-Ellen rummaged in the part that was partitioned off from Carrie. "I don't see any groceries, Gramma."

Grandpa came back to help her, and stood staring. "Dick!" he called. "Did you tie that box on like I said?"

Dick dropped a startled lip. "Gee whiz, Grampa! It was wedged in so tight I never thought."

"No," said Grandpa, "I reckon you never did think." Silently they ate the scanty lunch in the shoe-box, and as silently the men cut "boots" from worn-out tires and cemented them under the holes in the almost worn-out ones. Silently they jogged on again, the engine stuttering and Daddy driving as if on egg-shells.

"Talk, won't you?" he asked suddenly. "My goodness, everyone is so still--it gets on my nerves."

Sally said, "Goin' by-by!" and leaned forward from Grandma's knees to give her father a strangling hug around the neck. Sally was two and a half now, and lively enough to keep one person busy. The pale curls all over her head were enchanting, and so was her talk. She had learned Buenos dias, good day, from a Mexican neighbor; bambina bella, pretty baby girl, from the Serafinis, and Sayonara, good-by, from a Japanese boss in the peas.

Rose-Ellen pulled the baby back and gave her a kiss in the hollow at the back of her neck. Then she tried to think of something to say herself. "Maybe they'll have school and church school at this next place for a change."

"Aw, you're sissy," Dick grumbled in his new, thick-thin voice. "If church was so much, why wouldn't it keep folks from being treated like us? Huh?"

Grandma roused herself from her limp stillness. "Maybe you didn't take notice," she said sharply, "that usually when folks was kind, and tried to make those dreadful camps a little decenter, why, it was Christian folks. There wouldn't hardly anything else make 'em treat that horrid itch and trachoma and all the catching diseases--hardly anything but being Christians."

"Aw," Dick jeered. "If the church folks got together and put their foot down they could clear up the whole business in a jiffy."

"We always been church folks ourselves," Grandma snapped. "It isn't so easy to get a hold."

"Hush up, Dick," Grandpa ordered with unusual sharpness. "Can't you see Gramma's clean done out?"

Grandma looked "done out," but Rose-Ellen, glancing soberly from one to the other, was sorry for Dick, too-his blue eyes frowned so unhappily.

Rose-Ellen tried to change the subject. "Apples!" she said. "I love oranges and ripe figs, and those big persimmons that you sort of drown in-but apples are homiest. I'd like to get my teeth into a hard red one and work right around."

That wasn't a good subject, either. "I'm hungry!" Jimmie bellowed.

And just then another tire blew out.

The old Reo had bumped along on its rim for an hour when Grandma said in a thin voice, "Next time we come to any likely shade, I guess we best stop. I'm . . . I'm just beat out."

With an anxious backward glance at her, Daddy stopped the car under a tree.

"I reckon some of you better go on to that town and get some bread and maybe weenies and potatoes," Grandma said faintly.

Grandpa and Daddy pulled out the tent and set it up under the tree, so that Grandma could lie down in its shelter. Then they bumped away, leaving the children to mind Sally and lead Carrie along the edge of the highway to graze, while Grandma slept.


"I never was so hungry in all my days," Jimmie kept saying.

All the children watched that strip of pavement with the hot air quivering above it, but still the car did not come.

Suddenly Rose-Ellen clutched Dick's arm. "Those two men look like . . . look like. . . . They are Grampa and Daddy. But what have they done with the car?"

"Where's the car?" Dick shouted, as the men came up.

"W'ere tar?" Sally echoed, patting her hands against the bulging gunnysack her father carried.

"Here's the car," Daddy answered, pointing to the sack.

"You . . . sold it, Dad?" Dick demanded. "How much?"

"Five dollars." Daddy's jaw tightened. "They called it junk. Well, the grub will last a little while. . . ."

"And when Gramma's rested, we can pull the trailer and kind of hike along toward them apples," Grandpa said stoutly.

But Grandma looked as if she'd never be rested. She lay quite still except for the breath that blew out her gray lips and drew them in again, and her closed eyes were hollow. The other six stood around and gazed at her in terror. Anyone else could be sick and the earth went on turning, but . . . Grandma!

They were too intent t............