trimmed, packed lettuce; but during most of that time the
barn-apartment was in quarantine. All the children who had not
had scarlet fever came down with it.

It was even hotter than midsummer Philadelphia, and the air was
sticky, and black with flies besides, and sickening with odor.
Grandma's cushiony pinkness entirely disappeared; she was more
the color of a paper-bag, Rose-Ellen thought.

"But land knows," Grandma said, "what I'd have done if the Lord
hadn't tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. What with no Center
near here and only the public health nurse looking in once in a
while, it was lucky the young-ones didn't have the fever bad."

In August they were all well and peeled. Grandma heated tub after
tub of water and scrubbed them, hair and all, with yellow laundry
soap, and washed their clothes and put the automobile-seat beds
into the hot sun. Then they went on up the coast, steering for
the hopyards northeast of San Francisco.

It seemed too bad to hurry through San Francisco without really
seeing it--that beautiful city crowded steeply by the sea. But
the Reo had had to have a new gas-line and a battery, and little
money was left to show for the long, sizzling months of work. It
was best to stay clear of cities.

The Sacramento Delta region was the strangest the Beechams had
ever seen. The broad river, refreshing after months without real
rivers, was higher than the fields. Beside the river ran the
highway. The Beechams looked down at pear orchards, tule marshes