"Oh, Rose-Ellen!" Grandma called.
Rose-Ellen slowly put down her library book and skipped into the
kitchen. Grandma peppered the fried potatoes, sliced some
wrinkled tomatoes into nests of wilting lettuce, and wiped her
dripping face with the hem of her clean gingham apron. The
kitchen was even hotter than the half-darkened sitting room where
crippled Jimmie sprawled on the floor listlessly wheeling a toy
automobile, the pale little baby on a quilt beside him.
Grandma squinted through the door at the old Seth Thomas dock in
the sitting room. "Half after six! Rose-Ellen, you run down to
the shop and tell Grandpa supper's spoiling. Why he's got to hang
round that shop till supper's spoilt when he could fix up all the
shoes he's got in two-three hours, I don't understand. 'Twould be
different if he had anything to do. . . ."
Rose-Ellen said, "O.K., Gramma!" and ran through the hall. She'd
rather get away before Grandma talked any more about the shop.
Day after day she had heard about it. Grandma talked to her,
though she was only ten, because she and Grandma were the only
women in the family, since last winter when Mother died.
As Rose-Ellen let the front door slam behind her, she saw Daddy
coming slowly up the street. The way his broad shoulders drooped
and the way he took off his hat and pushed back his thick, dark
hair told her as plainly as words that he hadn't found work that
day. Even though you were a child, you got so tired--so tired--of
the grown folks' worrying about where the next quart of milk
would come from. So Rose-Ellen patted him on the arm as they
passed, saying, "Hi, Daddy, I'm after Grampa!" and hop-skipped on
toward the old cobbler shop. Before Rose-Ellen was born, when
Daddy was a boy, even, Grandpa had had his shop at that corner of
the city street.
There he was, standing behind the counter in the shadowy shop,
his shoulders drooping like Daddy's. He was a big, kind-looking
old man, his gray hair waving round a bald dome, his eyes bright
blue. He was looking at a newspaper. It was a crumpled old
paper that had been wrapped around someone's shoes; the Beechams
didn't spend pennies for newspapers nowadays.
The long brushes were quiet from their whirling. On the rack of
finished shoes two pairs awaited their owners; on the other rack
were a few that had evidently just come in. Yet Grandpa looked
as tired as if he had mended a hundred pairs.
He looked up when the bell tinkled. "Oh, Ellen-girl! Anything
wrong?"
"Only Gramma says please come to supper. Everything's getting
spoiled."
Grandpa glanced at his old clock. It said half-past five. "I keep
tinkering with it, but it's seen its best days. Like me."
He took off his denim apron, rolled down his sleeves, put on his
hat and coat, and locked the door behind them. But not before he
had looked wistfully around the little place, with its smell of
beeswax, leather and dye, where he had worked so long. Its walls
were papered with his favorite calendars: country scenes that
reminded him of his farm boyhood; roly-poly babies in bathtubs; a
pretty girl who looked, he said, like Grandma--a funny idea to
Rose-Ellen. Patched linoleum, doorstep hollowed by thousands of
feet--Grandpa looked at everything as if it were new and bright,
and as if he loved it.
Starting home, he took Rose-Ellen's small damp hand in his big
damp one. The sun blinded them as they walked westward, and the
heat struck at them fiercely from pavement and wall, as if it
were fighting them. Rose-Ellen was strong and didn't mind. She
held her head straight to make her thick brown curls hit against
her backbone. She knew she was pretty, with her round face and
dark-lashed hazel eyes; and that nobody would think her starchy
short pink dress was old, because Grandma had mended it so
nicely. Grandma had darned the short socks that turned down to
her stout slippers, too; and Grandpa had mended the slippers till
the tops would hardly hold another pair of soles.
"Hi, Rosie!" called Julie Albi, who lived next door. "C'm'out and
play after supper?"
"Next door" was the right way to say it. This Philadelphia street
was like two block-long houses, facing each other across a strip
of pavement, each with many pairs of twin front doors, each pair
with two scrubbed stone steps down to the sidewalk, and two bay
windows bulging out upstairs, so that they seemed nearly to touch
the ones across the narrow street. Rose-Ellen and Julie shared
twin doors and steps; and inside only a thin wall separated them.
At the door Dick overtook Grandpa and Rose-Ellen. Dick was
twelve. Sometimes Rose-Ellen considered him nothing but a
nuisance, and sometimes she was proud of his tallness, his curly
fair hair and bright blue eyes. He dashed in ahead when Grandpa
turned the key, but Grandpa lingered.
Rose-Ellen said, "Hurry, Grampa, everything's getting cold." But
she understood. He was thinking that their dear old house was no
longer theirs. Something strange had happened to it, called "sold
for taxes," and they were allowed to live in it only this summer.
Grandma blamed the shop. It had brought in the money to buy the
house in the first place and had kept it up until a few years
ago. It had put Daddy through a year in college. Now it was
failing. Once, it seemed, people bought good shoes and had them
mended many times. Then came days when many people were poor.
They had to buy shoes too cheap to be mended; so when the soles
wore out, the people threw the shoes away and bought more cheap
ones. No longer were Grandpa's shoe racks crowded. No longer was
there money even for taxes. All Grandpa took in was barely enough
for food and shop rent. But what else besides mending shoes and
farming did he know how to do? And who would hire an old man when
jobs were so few?
Even young Daddy had lost his job as a photograph finisher, and
had brought his wife and three children home to live with Grandpa
and Grandma. There Baby Sally was born; and there, before the
baby was a month old, Mother had died. Soon after, the old house
had been sold for taxes.
Grandma went about her work with the strong lines of her square
face fixed in sadness. She was forever begging Grandpa to give up
the shop, but Grandpa smashed his fist down on the table and said
it was like giving up his life. . . . And day after day Daddy hunted
work and was cross because he could find none.
For Dick and Rose-Ellen the summer had not been very different
from usual. Dick blacked boots on Saturdays to earn a few dimes;
Rose-Ellen helped Grandma with the "chores." They had long hours
of play besides.
But the hot summer had been hard for nine-year-old Jimmie and the
baby. They drooped like flowers in baked ground. Since Jimmie's
infantile paralysis, three years before, he had been able to walk
very little, and school had seemed out of the question. Unable to
read or to run and play, he had a dull time.
Grandpa and Rose-Ellen went through the clean, shabby hall to the
kitchen, where Grandma was rocking in the old rocker, Sally
whimpering on her lap.
"Well, for the land's sakes," said Grandma, "did you make up your
mind to come home at last? Mind Baby, Rose-Ellen, while I dish
up."
After supper, Daddy sat hopelessly studying the "Help Wanted"
column in last Sunday's paper, borrowed from the Albis. Jimmie
looked at the funnies, and Grandma and Rose-Ellen did the dishes.
Julie Albi, who had come to play, sat waiting with heels hooked
over a chair-rung.
The shabby kitchen was pleasant, with rag rugs on the painted
floor and crisp, worn curtains. The table and chairs were
cream-color, and the table wore an embroidered flour-sack cover.
Grandpa pottered with a loose door-latch until Grandma wrung
the suds from her hands and cried fiercely, "What's the use
doing such things, Grampa? You know good and well we can't
stay on here. Everything's being taken away from us, even our
children. . . ."
[Illustration: Grandpa pottering]
"Miss Piper come to see you, too?" Grandpa groaned.
"Taken away? Us?" gasped Rose-Ellen.
"What's all this?" Daddy demanded. He stood in the doorway
staring at Grandpa and Grandma, and his bright dark eyes looked
almost as unbelieving as they had when Mother slipped away from
him. "You can't mean they want to take away our children?"
Dick came to the door with half of Jimmie's funnies, his mouth
open; and Jimmie hobbled in, bent almost double, thin hand on
crippled knee. Julie slipped politely away.
Then the news came out. The woman from the "Family Society" had
called that day and had advised Grandma to put the children into
a Home. When Grandma would not listen, the woman went on to the
shop and talked with Grandpa.
"Her telling us they wasn't getting enough milk and vegetables!"
Grandma scolded, wiping her eyes with one hand and smoothing back
Rose-Ellen's curls with the other. "Saying Jimmie'd ought to be
where he'd get sunshine without roasting. Good as telling me we
don't know how to raise children, and her without a young-one to
her name."
Grandpa blew his nose. "Well, it takes money to give the kids the
vittles they ought to have."
"I won't go away from my own house!" howled Jimmie.
Rose-Ellen and Dick blinked at each other. It was one thing to
scrap a little and quite another to be entirely apart. And the
baby. . . .
"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.
[Illustration: Mrs. Albi]
"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."
"But what good will that do us, Mis' Albi?" Grandma asked flatly.
"It's close onto September and berries is out."
"The cranberry bog!" Mrs. Albi shouted triumphantly. "Only today
the _padrone_, he come to my people asking who will pick the
cranberry. And that Jersey air, it will bring the fat and the red
to these Jimmie's cheeks and to the _bambina_'s!" Mrs. Albi wheezed
as she ran out of breath.
The Beechams stared at her. Many Italians and Americans went to
the farms to pick berries and beans. The Beechams had never
thought of doing so, since Grandpa had his cobbling and Daddy his
photograph finishing.
"Well, why shouldn't we?" Daddy fired the question into the
stillness.
"But school?" asked Rose-Ellen, who liked school.
Mrs. Albi waved a work-worn palm. "You smart, Rosie. You ketch up
all right."
"That's okeydoke with me!" Dick exclaimed, yanking his sister's
curls. "You can have your old school."
Sally woke with a cry like a kitten's mew and Rose-Ellen lugged
her out, balanced on her hip. Mrs. Albi's Michael was the same
age, but he would have made two of Sally. Above Sally's small
white face her pale hair stood up thinly; her big gray eyes and
little pale mouth were solemn.
"Why," Grandma said doubtfully, "we . . . why, if Grandpa would give
up his shop--just for the cranberry season. We got no place else
to go."
Grandpa sighed. "Looks like the shop's give me up already. We
could think about it."
"All together!" whooped Dick. "And not any school!"
"Now, hold your horses," Grandma cautioned. "Beechams don't run
off nobody knows where, without anyway sleeping over it."
But though they "slept over" the problem and talked it over as
hard as they could, going to the cranberry bogs was the best
answer they could find for the difficulty. It seemed the only way
for them to stay together.
"Something will surely turn up in a month or two," Daddy said.
"And without my kids"--he spread his big hands--"I haven't a
thing to show for my thirty-two years."
"The thing is," Grandpa summed it up, "when we get out of this
house we've got to pay rent, and I'm not making enough for rent
and food, too. No place to live, or else nothing to eat."
Finally it was decided that they should go.
Now there was much to do. They set aside a few of their most
precious belongings to be stored, like Grandma's grandma's
painted dower chest, full of treasures, and Grandpa's tall desk
and Rose-Ellen's dearest doll. Next they chose the things they
must use during their stay in Jersey. Finally they called in the
second-hand man around the corner to buy the things that were
left.
Poor Grandma! She clenched her hands under her patched apron when
the man shoved her beloved furniture around and glanced
contemptuously at the clean old sewing machine that had made them
so many nice clothes. "One dollar for the machine, lady."
Rose-Ellen tucked her hand into Grandma's as they looked at the
few boxes and pieces of furniture they were leaving behind,
standing on stilts in Mrs. Albi's basement to keep dry.
"It's so funny," Rose-Ellen stammered; "almost as if that was all
that was left of our home."
"Funny as a tombstone," said Grandma. Then she went and grabbed
the old Seth Thomas clock and hugged it to her. "This seems the
livingest thing. It goes where I go."
At last, everything was disposed of, and the padrone's agent's
big truck pulled up to their curb. Two feather beds, a trunk,
pots, pans, dishes and the Beechams were piled into the space
left by some twenty-five other people. The truck roared away,
with the neighbors shouting good-by from steps and windows.
Grandma kept her eyes straight ahead so as not to see her house
again. Grandpa shifted Jimmie around to make his lame leg more
comfortable, just as they passed the cobbler's shop with "TO LET"
in the window. Grandpa did not lift his eyes.
"I hope Mrs. Albi will sprinkle them Bronze Beauty chrysanthemums
so they won't all die off," Grandma said in a choked voice.