h nurses, when they came to visit the
sick ones, warned the women to cover food and garbage, but most
of the women laughed at the advice.

"Those doctor always tell us things," the Beechams' Italian
neighbor, Mrs. Serafini, said lightly. She was dandling a sad
baby while the sad baby sucked a disk of salami, heavy with
spices. "And those nurse also are crazy. Back in asparagus I
send-it my kids to the Center, and what you think? They take off
Pepe's clothes! They say it is not healthy that she wear the
swaddlings. I tell Angelina to say to them that my _madre_ before
me was dressed so; but again they strip the poor angel."

"And what did you do then?" Rose-Ellen inquired.

"No more did I send-it my kids to the Center!" Mrs. Serafini
cried dramatically.

"I'd think myself," Grandma observed dryly, "your baby might feel
better in such hot weather if she was dressed more like Sally."

Mrs. Serafini eyed Sally's short crepe dress, worn over a single
flour-sack undergarment. "We have-it our ways, you have-it
yours," was all she would say.

[Illustration: Mrs. Serafini]

While the elders talked, Jimmie had been staring at Pepe's next
brother, Pedro. Seven years old, Pedro might have been, but he
could move about only by sitting on the ground and hitching
himself along. He was crippled much worse than Jimmie.

"I wonder, couldn't I show Pedro my scrapbook?" he whispered,
nudging Grandma.

"To be sure; and I always said if you'd think more about others,
you wouldn't be so sorry for yourself," Grandma replied.

Jimmie scowled at the sermon, but he went in and got his books,
and the two boys sat up against the shack wall till dark, Jimmie
telling stories to match the pictures. It was a week before they
could repeat that pleasant hour. Next day both were ill with the
fever that was sweeping the hop camp.

Next time the nurses came they had medicines and suggestions for
Grandma. They liked her, and looked smilingly at the clock and
approvingly at Carrie and at the covered garbage can and at the
food draped with mosquito netting.

"We're going to have to enforce those rules," they told Grandma.
"There wouldn't be half the sickness if everyone minded as you
do."

That evening people from all parts of the camp gathered to
discuss the renewed orders: Italians, Mexicans, Americans,
Indians.

"They says to my mother," a little Indian girl confided to
Rose-Ellen, "'You no cover up your grub, we throw him