could read," Cissy said dreamily, sitting on the
packing-box doorstep with elbows on knees and chin on palms.
"But Paw could tell purty tales and Maw could sing song-ballads
that would make you weep. But they wasn't no good huntin' no
more, and the kittles was empty. So we come down to the coal
mines, and when the mines shut down, we went on into the onions."

These were great marshes, drained like cranberry bogs and planted
in onions. Whole families could work there, planting, weeding,
pulling, packing.

("I've learned a lot!" thought Rose-Ellen. "I used to ask the
grocer for a nickel's worth of dry onions, and I never did guess
how they came to be there.")

The first year was dreary. Maw took the baby (Mary, then) and
laid her on a blanket at the end of the row she was working, with
Tom to watch her. Cissy worked along with the grown folks, or
some days stayed home and did the washing and minded Tom and
Mary.

"I shore didn't know how to wash good as I do now." She patted
her faded dress, pretty clean, though not like the clothes of
Grandma's washing.

There was one thing about it, Cissy said; after a day in onions,
with the sun shining hot on her sunbonnet and not much to eat,
she didn't care if there wasn't any play or fun at night; she was
glad enough to drop down on the floor and go to sleep as soon as
she'd had corn pone and coffee. Sometimes she was sick from the
sun beating down on her head and she had to crawl into the shade
of a crate and lie there.

The second year was different. Next summer, early, when the
cherries had set their green beads and the laylocks had quit
blooming, there came two young ladies. They came of an evening,
and talked to Paw and Maw as they sat on the doorsill with their
shoes kicked off and their bare toes resting themselves.

First Paw and Maw wouldn't talk to them because why would these
pretty young ladies come mixing around with strangers? Paw and
Maw allowed they had something up their sleeves. But the ladies
patted Georgie, the baby then, and held him; and Cissy crept
closer and closer, because they smelled so nice. And then they
asked Maw if they couldn't take Cissy in their car and pay her as
much as she earned picking. She was to help them invite the
children to a place where they could be safe and happy while
their grown folks worked.

Cissy couldn't hardly sense it; but Maw let her go, because she
was puny. The teachers got an old schoolhouse t