the flowers.

"I had a little sister named Rose-Ellen," the woman said gently.
"You come play on the grass sometime, and we'll pick flowers for
your mother."

"And can Nico and Vicente come, too?" Rose-Ellen asked. "They're
my best friends."

The woman looked at Nico and Vicente with cold eyes. "I can't ask
_all_ the children," she answered.

"Thank you, ma'am," Rose-Ellen stammered. When they were out of
sight down the road, she threw the roses into the dust. Nico
snatched them up again.

"I wouldn't go there--I wouldn't go there for ten dollars,"
Rose-Ellen declared. Vicente looked at her with wise deep eyes.
"I could 'a' told you," she said, shrugging. "American ladies,
they mostly don't like Mexican kids. I don't know why."

October came. It was the time for the topping of the beets. The
Martinez family went back to Denver for school. The Garcias
stayed; their children would go into the special room when they
returned, to have English lessons and to catch up in other
studies--or rather, to try to catch up.

"But me, always I am two years in back of myself," Vicente
regretted one day, "even with specials room. Early out of school
and late into it, for me that makes too hard."

Now Farmer Lukes went through the Beechams' acres, lifting the
beets loose by machine. Rose-Ellen could not believe they were
beets-great dirt-colored clods, they looked. Not at all like the
beets she knew.

Topping was a new job. With a long hooked knife the beet was
lifted and laid across the arm, and then, with a slash or two,
freed of its top. The children followed, gathering the beets
into great piles for Mr. Lukes's wagon to collect.

Vicente and Joe did not make piles; they topped; and Joe boasted
that he was faster than his father as he slashed away with the
topping knife.

"It looks like you'd cut yourself, holding it on your knee like
you do!" Grandma cried as she watched him one day.

"Not me!" bragged Joe. "Other kids does." The beet tops fell
away under his flashing knife.

From the beet-dump the beets were taken to the sugar factory a
few miles away, where they were made into shining white beet
sugar. ("And that's another thing I never even guessed!" thought
Rose-Ellen. "What hard work it takes to fill our sugar bowls!")

Sometimes at night now a skim of ice formed on the water bucket
in the chicken-house. Goldenrod and asters were puffs of white;
the harvest moon shone big and red at the skyline,