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."
"Aw," Dick jeered. "If the church folks got together and put their foot down they could clear up the whole business in a jiffy."
"We always been church folks ourselves," Grandma snapped. "It isn't so easy to get a hold."
"Hush up, Dick," Grandpa ordered with unusual sharpness. "Can't you see Gramma's clean done out?"
Grandma looked "done out," but Rose-Ellen, glancing soberly from one to the other, was sorry for Dick, too-his blue eyes frowned so unhappily.
Rose-Ellen tried to change the subject. "Apples!" she said. "I love oranges and ripe figs, and those big persimmons that you sort of drown in-but apples are homiest. I'd like to get my teeth into a hard red one and work right around."
That wasn't a good subject, either. "I'm hungry!" Jimmie bellowed.
And just then another tire blew out.
The old Reo had bumped along on its rim for an hour when Grandma said in a thin voice, "Next time we come to any likely shade, I guess we best stop. I'm . . . I'm just beat out."
With an anxious backward glance at her, Daddy stopped the car under a tree.