"We've got to grit our teeth and hang on," said Grandma.
Then came the Big Storm.
All day the air had been heavy, still; weatherwise pickers
watched the white sky anxiously. In the middle of the night,
Rose-Ellen woke to the shriek of wind and the crack of canvas.
Then, with a splintering crash, the tent-poles collapsed and she
was buried under a mass of wet canvas.
At first she could hear no voice through the howling wind and
battering rain. Then Sally's wail sounded, and Grandma's call:
"Rose-Ellen! Jimmie! Dick! You all right?"
Until dawn the Beechams could only huddle together in the small
refuge Daddy contrived against the dripping, pricking blackness.
When day came, the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but
fitfully, as if they, too, were tired out. The family scurried
around putting up the tent and building a fire and drying things
out before the men must go to the grove. Rose-Ellen and Dick and
even Jimmie felt less dismal when they steamed before the washtub
stove and ate something hot.
[Illustration: Putting up the tent]
Grandma and Sally felt less relief. Sally's cheeks were hot and
red, and she turned her head from side to side, crying and
coughing. Grandma was saying, "My land, my land, I'd give five
years of my life to be in my own house with this sick little
mite!" when a smooth gray head thrust aside the tent flap and a
neighborly voice said, "Oh, mercy me!"
Then without waiting for invitation, a crisp gingham dress
followed the gray head in.
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