"Would Miss Piper take . . . Sally?" Rose-Ellen quavered.
Grandma nodded, lips tight.
"They shan't!" Rose-Ellen whispered.
"Nonsense!" Daddy said hoarsely, his hands tightening on Jimmie's shoulder and Rose-Ellen's. "It's better for families to stick together, even if they don't get everything they need. Ma, you think it's better, don't you?"
He looked anxiously at his parents and they looked pityingly at him, as if he were a boy again, and before they knew it the whole family were crying together, Grandpa and Daddy pretending they had colds.
Then came a knock at the door, and Grandma mopped her eyes with her apron and answered. Julie's mother stood there, a comfortable brown woman with shining black hair and gold earrings, the youngest Albi enthroned on her arm. Mrs. Albi's eyebrows had risen to the middle of her forehead, and she patted Grandma's shoulder plumply.
"Now, now, now, now!" she comforted in a big voice. "All will be well, praise God. Julie, she tell me. All will be well."
"How on earth can all be well?" Grandma protested. "I don't see no prospects."
"This summer as you know," said Mrs. Albi, "we went into Jersey. For two months we all pick the berries. Enough we earn to put-it food into our mouth. And the keeds! They go white and skinny, and they come home, like you see it, brown and fat." Her voice rose and she waved the baby dramatically. "Not so good the houses, I would not lie to you. But we make like we have the peekaneeka. By night the cool fresh air blow on us and by day the warm fresh air. And vegetables and fruit so cheap, so cheap."