the Garcias', and her brothers. Even when they all picked beans
in the morning, during the vacation from sugar beets, there were
these long, cool evenings for play.

Grandma complained. "I don't know what else to blame for Dick's
untidy ways. Hair sticking up five ways for Christmas, and
fingernails in mourning and the manners of a heathen. I'm afraid
that sore on his hand may be something catching. Those Garcias
and Martinezes of yours . . . !"

"The Garcias maybe, but not the Martinezes," Rose-Ellen objected.
"Gramma, you go to their houses sometime and see."

One evening Grandma did. Jimmie had come excitedly leading home
the quaintest of all the babies of the Mexican village, Vicente
Garcia's little sister. He had found her balancing on her
stomach on the bank of the ditch. Three years old, she was, and
slim and straight, with enormous eyes and a great tangle of
sunburned brown curls. Her dress made her quainter still, for it
was low-necked and sleeveless, and came to her tiny ankles so
that she looked like a child from an old-fashioned picture.

Grandma and Rose-Ellen and Jimmie walked home with her, and
Grandma's eyes widened at sight of the two-roomed Garcia house.
Ten people lived and slept, ate and cooked there, and it looked
as if it had never met a broom or soapsuds.

The Martinez home was different, perfectly neat, even to the
scrubbed oilcloth on the table. Afterwards Grandma said the
bottoms of the pans weren't scoured, but she couldn't feel to