battering rain. Then Sally's wail sounded, and Grandma's call:
"Rose-Ellen! Jimmie! Dick! You all right?"

Until dawn the Beechams could only huddle together in the small
refuge Daddy contrived against the dripping, pricking blackness.
When day came, the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but
fitfully, as if they, too, were tired out. The family scurried
around putting up the tent and building a fire and drying things
out before the men must go to the grove. Rose-Ellen and Dick and
even Jimmie felt less dismal when they steamed before the washtub
stove and ate something hot.


[Illustration: Putting up the tent]


Grandma and Sally felt less relief. Sally's cheeks were hot and
red, and she turned her head from side to side, crying and
coughing. Grandma was saying, "My land, my land, I'd give five
years of my life to be in my own house with this sick little
mite!" when a smooth gray head thrust aside the tent flap and a
neighborly voice said, "Oh, mercy me!"

Then without waiting for invitation, a crisp gingham dress
followed the gray head in. "Is she bad sick? Have you-all had
the doctor? I'm Mrs. King, from town."

"And you really think we're humans?" Grandma demanded, her cheeks
as red as Sally's. "If you do, you're the first since we struck
this place. You'll have to excuse me," she apologized, as the