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?"