Dick had trouble, too, for the seventh grade
was well started on United States history, and he couldn't catch
up. But that was not the worst of it. The two children could
not seem to fit in with their schoolmates. The village girls
gathered in groups by themselves and acted as if the oyster-shuckers'
children were not there at all; and the boys did not give Dick even
a chance to show what a good pitcher he was. Both Rose-Ellen
and Dick had been leaders in the city school, and now they felt
so lonesome that Rose-Ellen often cried when she got home.
It was too long a walk for Jimmie, who begged not to go anyway.
Besides, he was needed at home to mind Sally.
Of course the grown folks wanted to earn all they could. The pay
was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of
cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized
oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds
were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb
hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's
rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up
until something happened that forced her to.
It was late November, and the fire in the shack must be kept
going all day to make the rooms warm enough for Sally. She was
creeping now, and during the long hours when the grown folks were
working and the older children at school, she had to stay in a
chair with a gate across the front which her father had fixed out
of an old kitchen armchair.
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