Yet, as October passed, something happened to change Jimmie's
mind.
As October passed, too, the Beechams grew skillful at picking.
They couldn't earn much, for it took a lot of cranberries to fill
a peck measure-two gallons-especially this year, when the berries
were small; and the pickers got only fifteen cents a peck. The
bogs had to be flooded every night to keep the fruit from
freezing; so every morning the mud was icy and so were the
shower-baths from the wet bushes. But except for Grandma, they
didn't find it hard work now.
"It's sure bad on the rheumatiz," said Grandma one morning, as
she bent stiffly to wash clothes in the tub that had been filled
and heated with such effort. "If we was home, we'd be lighting
little kindling fires in the furnace night and morning. And hot
water just by lighting the gas! Land, I never knew my own luck."
"But I like it here!" Jimmie burst out eagerly. "Do you know
something? I'm going to learn to read! I colored my pictures
the neatest of anyone in the class, and She put them all on the
wall. So then I didn't mind telling her how I never learned to
read and write and how Rose-Ellen wrote my letter to Jimmie Brown
in Cleveland."
He beamed so proudly that Grandpa, wringing a sheet for Grandma,
looked sorrowfully at him over his glasses.
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