Rose-Ellen slowly put down her library book and skipped into the kitchen. Grandma peppered the fried potatoes, sliced some wrinkled tomatoes into nests of wilting1 lettuce2, and wiped her dripping face with the hem3 of her clean gingham apron4. The kitchen was even hotter than the half-darkened sitting room where crippled Jimmie sprawled5 on the floor listlessly wheeling a toy automobile6, the pale little baby on a quilt beside him.
Grandma squinted7 through the door at the old Seth Thomas dock in the sitting room. "Half after six! Rose-Ellen, you run down to the shop and tell Grandpa supper's spoiling. Why he's got to hang round that shop till supper's spoilt when he could fix up all the shoes he's got in two-three hours, I don't understand. 'Twould be different if he had anything to do. . . ."
Rose-Ellen said, "O.K., Gramma!" and ran through the hall. She'd rather get away before Grandma talked any more about the shop. Day after day she had heard about it. Grandma talked to her, though she was only ten, because she and Grandma were the only women in the family, since last winter when Mother died.
As Rose-Ellen let the front door slam behind her, she saw Daddy coming slowly up the street. The way his broad shoulders drooped8 and the way he took off his hat and pushed back his thick, dark hair told her as plainly as words that he hadn't found work that day. Even though you were a child, you got so tired--so tired--of the grown folks' worrying about where the next quart of milk would come from. So Rose-Ellen patted him on the arm as they passed, saying, "Hi, Daddy, I'm after Grampa!" and hop-skipped on toward the old cobbler shop. Before Rose-Ellen was born, when Daddy was a boy, even, Grandpa had had his shop at that corner of the city street.
There he was, standing9 behind the counter in the shadowy shop, his shoulders drooping10 like Daddy's. He was a big, kind-looking old man, his gray hair waving round a bald dome11, his eyes bright blue. He was looking at a newspaper. It was a crumpled12 old paper that had been wrapped around someone's shoes; the Beechams didn't spend pennies for newspapers nowadays.
The long brushes were quiet from their whirling. On the rack of finished shoes two pairs awaited their owners; on the other rack were a few that had evidently just come in. Yet Grandpa looked as tired as if he had mended a hundred pairs.
He looked up when the bell tinkled13. "Oh, Ellen-girl! Anything wrong?"
"Only Gramma says please come to supper. Everything's getting spoiled."
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 denim14 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 linoleum15, 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 westward16, 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 backbone17. 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 stout18 slippers19, 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?"
"Next door" was the right way to say it. This Philadelphia street was like two block-long houses, facing each other across a strip of pavement, each with many pairs of twin front doors, each pair with two scrubbed stone steps down to the sidewalk, and two bay windows bulging20 out upstairs, so that they seemed nearly to touch the ones across the narrow street. Rose-Ellen and Julie shared twin doors and steps; and inside only a thin wall separated them.
At the door Dick overtook Grandpa and Rose-Ellen. Dick was twelve. Sometimes Rose-Ellen considered him nothing but a nuisance, and sometimes she was proud of his tallness, his curly fair hair and bright blue eyes. He dashed in ahead when Grandpa turned the key, but Grandpa lingered.
Rose-Ellen said, "Hurry, Grampa, everything's getting cold." But she understood. He was thinking that their dear old house was no longer theirs. Something strange had happened to it, called "sold for taxes," and they were allowed to live in it only this summer.
Grandma blamed the shop. It had brought in the money to buy the house in the first place and had kept it up until a few years ago. It had put Daddy through a year in college. Now it was failing. Once, it seemed, people bought good shoes and had them mended many times. Then came days when many people were poor. They had to buy shoes too cheap to be mended; so when the soles wore out, the people threw the shoes away and bought more cheap ones. No longer were Grandpa's shoe racks crowded. No longer was there money even for taxes. All Grandpa took in was barely enough for food and shop rent. But what else besides mending shoes and farming did he know how to do? And who would hire an old man when jobs were so few?
Even young Daddy had lost his job as a photograph finisher, and had brought his wife and three children home to live with Grandpa and Grandma. There Baby Sally was born; and there, before the baby was a month old, Mother had died. Soon after, the old house had been sold for taxes.
Grandma went about her work with the strong lines of her square face fixed22 in sadness. She was forever begging Grandpa to give up the shop, but Grandpa smashed his fist down on the table and said it was like giving up his life. . . . And day after day Daddy hunted work and was cross because he could find none.
For Dick and Rose-Ellen the summer had not been very different from usual. Dick blacked boots on Saturdays to earn a few dimes23; Rose-Ellen helped Grandma with the "chores." They had long hours of play besides.
But the hot summer had been hard for nine-year-old Jimmie and the baby. They drooped like flowers in baked ground. Since Jimmie's infantile paralysis24, three years before, he had been able to walk very little, and school had seemed out of the question. Unable to read or to run and play, he had a dull time.
Grandpa and Rose-Ellen went through the clean, shabby hall to the kitchen, where Grandma was rocking in the old rocker, Sally whimpering on her lap.
"Well, for the land's sakes," said Grandma, "did you make up your mind to come home at last? Mind Baby, Rose-Ellen, while I dish up."
After supper, Daddy sat hopelessly studying the "Help Wanted" column in last Sunday's paper, borrowed from the Albis. Jimmie looked at the funnies, and Grandma and Rose-Ellen did the dishes. Julie Albi, who had come to play, sat waiting with heels hooked over a chair-rung.
The shabby kitchen was pleasant, with rag rugs on the painted floor and crisp, worn curtains. The table and chairs were cream-color, and the table wore an embroidered25 flour-sack cover. Grandpa pottered with a loose door-latch until Grandma wrung26 the suds from her hands and cried fiercely, "What's the use doing such things, Grampa? You know good and well we can't stay on here. Everything's being taken away from us, even our children. . . ."
"Miss Piper come to see you, too?" Grandpa groaned27.
"Taken away? Us?" gasped28 Rose-Ellen.
"What's all this?" Daddy demanded. He stood in the doorway29 staring at Grandpa and Grandma, and his bright dark eyes looked almost as unbelieving as they had when Mother slipped away from him. "You can't mean they want to take away our children?"
Dick came to the door with half of Jimmie's funnies, his mouth open; and Jimmie hobbled in, bent30 almost double, thin hand on crippled knee. Julie slipped politely away.
Then the news came out. The woman from the "Family Society" had called that day and had advised Grandma to put the children into a Home. When Grandma would not listen, the woman went on to the shop and talked with Grandpa.
"Her telling us they wasn't getting enough milk and vegetables!" Grandma scolded, wiping her eyes with one hand and smoothing back Rose-Ellen's curls with the other. "Saying Jimmie'd ought to be where he'd get sunshine without roasting. Good as telling me we don't know how to raise children, and her without a young-one to her name."
Grandpa blew his nose. "Well, it takes money to give the kids the vittles they ought to have."
"I won't go away from my own house!" howled Jimmie.
Rose-Ellen and Dick blinked at each other. It was one thing to scrap31 a little and quite another to be entirely32 apart. And the baby. . . .
"Would Miss Piper take . . . Sally?" Rose-Ellen quavered.
Grandma nodded, lips tight.
"They shan't!" Rose-Ellen whispered.
"Nonsense!" Daddy said hoarsely33, his hands tightening34 on Jimmie's shoulder and Rose-Ellen's. "It's better for families to stick together, even if they don't get everything they need. Ma, you think it's better, don't you?"
He looked anxiously at his parents and they looked pityingly at him, as if he were a boy again, and before they knew it the whole family were crying together, Grandpa and Daddy pretending they had colds.
Then came a knock at the door, and Grandma mopped her eyes with her apron and answered. Julie's mother stood there, a comfortable brown woman with shining black hair and gold earrings35, the youngest Albi enthroned on her arm. Mrs. Albi's eyebrows36 had risen to the middle of her forehead, and she patted Grandma's shoulder plumply.
"Now, now, now, now!" she comforted in a big voice. "All will be well, praise God. Julie, she tell me. All will be well."
"How on earth can all be well?" Grandma protested. "I don't see no prospects37."
"This summer as you know," said Mrs. Albi, "we went into Jersey38. For two months we all pick the berries. Enough we earn to put-it food into our mouth. And the keeds! They go white and skinny, and they come home, like you see it, brown and fat." Her voice rose and she waved the baby dramatically. "Not so good the houses, I would not lie to you. But we make like we have the peekaneeka. By night the cool fresh air blow on us and by day the warm fresh air. And vegetables and fruit so cheap, so cheap."
"But what good will that do us, Mis' Albi?" Grandma asked flatly. "It's close onto September and berries is out."
"The cranberry39 bog40!" Mrs. Albi shouted triumphantly41. "Only today the padrone, he come to my people asking who will pick the cranberry. And that Jersey air, it will bring the fat and the red to these Jimmie's cheeks and to the _bambina_'s!" Mrs. Albi wheezed42 as she ran out of breath.
The Beechams stared at her. Many Italians and Americans went to the farms to pick berries and beans. The Beechams had never thought of doing so, since Grandpa had his cobbling and Daddy his photograph finishing.
"Well, why shouldn't we?" Daddy fired the question into the stillness.
"But school?" asked Rose-Ellen, who liked school.
Mrs. Albi waved a work-worn palm. "You smart, Rosie. You ketch up all right."
"That's okeydoke with me!" Dick exclaimed, yanking his sister's curls. "You can have your old school."
Sally woke with a cry like a kitten's mew and Rose-Ellen lugged43 her out, balanced on her hip44. Mrs. Albi's Michael was the same age, but he would have made two of Sally. Above Sally's small white face her pale hair stood up thinly; her big gray eyes and little pale mouth were solemn.
"Why," Grandma said doubtfully, "we . . . why, if Grandpa would give up his shop--just for the cranberry season. We got no place else to go."
Grandpa sighed. "Looks like the shop's give me up already. We could think about it."
"All together!" whooped45 Dick. "And not any school!"
"Now, hold your horses," Grandma cautioned. "Beechams don't run off nobody knows where, without anyway sleeping over it."
But though they "slept over" the problem and talked it over as hard as they could, going to the cranberry bogs46 was the best answer they could find for the difficulty. It seemed the only way for them to stay together.
"Something will surely turn up in a month or two," Daddy said. "And without my kids"--he spread his big hands--"I haven't a thing to show for my thirty-two years."
"The thing is," Grandpa summed it up, "when we get out of this house we've got to pay rent, and I'm not making enough for rent and food, too. No place to live, or else nothing to eat."
Finally it was decided47 that they should go.
Now there was much to do. They set aside a few of their most precious belongings48 to be stored, like Grandma's grandma's painted dower chest, full of treasures, and Grandpa's tall desk and Rose-Ellen's dearest doll. Next they chose the things they must use during their stay in Jersey. Finally they called in the second-hand49 man around the corner to buy the things that were left.
Poor Grandma! She clenched50 her hands under her patched apron when the man shoved her beloved furniture around and glanced contemptuously at the clean old sewing machine that had made them so many nice clothes. "One dollar for the machine, lady."
Rose-Ellen tucked her hand into Grandma's as they looked at the few boxes and pieces of furniture they were leaving behind, standing on stilts51 in Mrs. Albi's basement to keep dry.
"It's so funny," Rose-Ellen stammered52; "almost as if that was all that was left of our home."
"Funny as a tombstone," said Grandma. Then she went and grabbed the old Seth Thomas clock and hugged it to her. "This seems the livingest thing. It goes where I go."
At last, everything was disposed of, and the padrone's agent's big truck pulled up to their curb53. Two feather beds, a trunk, pots, pans, dishes and the Beechams were piled into the space left by some twenty-five other people. The truck roared away, with the neighbors shouting good-by from steps and windows.
Grandma kept her eyes straight ahead so as not to see her house again. Grandpa shifted Jimmie around to make his lame21 leg more comfortable, just as they passed the cobbler's shop with "TO LET" in the window. Grandpa did not lift his eyes.
"I hope Mrs. Albi will sprinkle them Bronze Beauty chrysanthemums54 so they won't all die off," Grandma said in a choked voice.
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1
wilting
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| 萎蔫 | |
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lettuce
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| n.莴苣；生菜 | |
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hem
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| n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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7
squinted
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| 斜视( squint的过去式和过去分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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8
drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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13
tinkled
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| （使）发出丁当声，（使）发铃铃声( tinkle的过去式和过去分词 )； 叮当响着发出，铃铃响着报出 | |
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14
denim
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| n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤 | |
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linoleum
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| n.油布，油毯 | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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19
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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dimes
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| n.（美国、加拿大的）10分铸币( dime的名词复数 ) | |
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paralysis
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| n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症) | |
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embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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27
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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28
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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tightening
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| 上紧，固定，紧密 | |
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earrings
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| n.耳环( earring的名词复数 )；耳坠子 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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cranberry
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| n.梅果 | |
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40
bog
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| n.沼泽；室...陷入泥淖 | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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42
wheezed
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| v.喘息，发出呼哧呼哧的喘息声( wheeze的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
lugged
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| vt.用力拖拉（lug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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44
hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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45
whooped
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| 叫喊( whoop的过去式和过去分词 )； 高声说； 唤起 | |
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46
bogs
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| n.沼泽，泥塘( bog的名词复数 )；厕所v.（使）陷入泥沼， （使）陷入困境( bog的第三人称单数 )；妨碍，阻碍 | |
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47
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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48
belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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49
second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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50
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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51
stilts
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| n.（支撑建筑物高出地面或水面的）桩子，支柱( stilt的名词复数 )；高跷 | |
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52
stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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54
chrysanthemums
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| n.菊花( chrysanthemum的名词复数 ) | |
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