Yet, as October passed, something happened to change Jimmie's mind.
As October passed, too, the Beechams grew skillful at picking. They couldn't earn much, for it took a lot of cranberries to fill a peck measure-two gallons-especially this year, when the berries were small; and the pickers got only fifteen cents a peck. The bogs had to be flooded every night to keep the fruit from freezing; so every morning the mud was icy and so were the shower-baths from the wet bushes. But except for Grandma, they didn't find it hard work now.
"It's sure bad on the rheumatiz," said Grandma one morning, as she bent stiffly to wash clothes in the tub that had been filled and heated with such effort. "If we was home, we'd be lighting little kindling fires in the furnace night and morning. And hot water just by lighting the gas! Land, I never knew my own luck."
"But I like it here!" Jimmie burst out eagerly. "Do you know something? I'm going to learn to read! I colored my pictures the neatest of anyone in the class, and She put them all on the wall. So then I didn't mind telling her how I never learned to read and write and how Rose-Ellen wrote my letter to Jimmie Brown in Cleveland."
He beamed so proudly that Grandpa, wringing a sheet for Grandma, looked sorrowfully at him over his glasses. "It's a pity you didn't tell her sooner, young-one," he said. "The cranberries will be over in a few more days, and we'll be going back."
"Back to Philadelphia?" Rose-Ellen demanded. "Where? Not to a Home? I won't! I'd rather go on and shuck oysters like Pauline Isabel and her folks. I'd rather go on where they're cutting marsh hay. I'd rather--"
"Well, now," Grandpa's words were slow, "what about it, kids? What about it, Grandma? Do we go back to the city and-and part company till times are better? Or go on into oysters together?"
The tears stole down Jimmie's cheeks, but he didn't say anything. Daddy didn't say anything, either. He picked Sally up and hugged her so hard that she grunted and then put her tiny hands on his cheeks and peered into his eyes, chirping at him like a little bird.
"I calculate we'll go on into oysters," said Grandpa.