ell 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.