First Miss Pinkerton scrubbed her hands with water and carbolic-smelling soap, and then she unwrapped a waxed-paper package and spread napkins. For Jimmie she laid out a meat sandwich, a jam sandwich, a big orange-colored persimmon, and a cookie: not a dull store cookie, but a thick homemade one. The churches of the neighborhood took turns baking them for the Center. Jimmie ate every crumb.
In the next camp--asparagus--was a Mexican boy with a badly hurt leg. He had gashed it when he was topping beets, and his people had come on into cotton and into peas, without knowing how to take care of the throbbing wound. When Miss Pinkerton first saw it, she doubted whether leg or boy could be saved. It was still bad, and the boy's mother stood and cried while Miss Pinkerton dressed it, there under the strip-of-canvas house.
Miss Pinkerton saw Jimmie staring at that shelter and at the helpless mother, and she whispered, "Aren't you lucky to have a Grandma like yours, Jimmie-boy?"
When the leg was all neatly rebandaged, the boy caught at Miss Pinkerton with a shy hand. "_Gracias_--thank you," he said, "but why you take so long trouble for us, Lady, when we don't pay you nothing?"
"I don't think there's anything so well worth taking trouble for as just boys and girls," Miss Pinkerton said.
The boy frowned thoughtfully. "Other peoples don't think like that way," he persisted. "For why should you?"
"Well, it's really because of Jesus," Miss Pinkerton answered slowly. "You've heard about Jesus, haven't you?"
"Not me," the boy said. "Who is he?"
"He was God's Son, and he taught men to love one another. He taught them about God, too."
"God? I've heard the name, but I ain't never seen that guy either."