It was too long a walk for Jimmie, who begged not to go anyway.
Besides, he was needed at home to mind Sally.

Of course the grown folks wanted to earn all they could. The pay
was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of
cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized
oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds
were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb
hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's
rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up
until something happened that forced her to.

It was late November, and the fire in the shack must be kept
going all day to make the rooms warm enough for Sally. She was
creeping now, and during the long hours when the grown folks were
working and the older children at school, she had to stay in a
chair with a gate across the front which her father had fixed out
of an old kitchen armchair. Grandma cushioned it with rags, but
it grew hard and tiresome, and sometimes Jimmie could not keep
her contented there.

One day Sally cried until he wriggled her out of her nest and
spread a quilt for her in a corner of the room as Grandma did.
There he sat, fencing her in with his legs while he drew pictures
of oyster-houses. He was so busy drawing roofs that he had
forgot all about Sally until he was startled by her scream. He
jerked around in terror. Sally had clambered over the fence of
his legs and crept under the stove after her ball. Perhaps a
spark had snapped through the half-open slide in the stove door;