run to
the store for me. Right away."

"Can't Cathy go?" Jerry really did not mind running (though he usually
walked or rode his bike to the store) but it was a matter of principle
with him to make a try at getting out of work.

"I have other things for Cathy to do," said Mrs. Martin and shut the
window.

There were two steps still unswept but Jerry left them untouched by
his lazy broom. After all, how could he be expected to do two things
at once? He wished, not for the first time, that his mother would do
her grocery shopping at the supermarket, which was far enough away so
she would have to take the car. Instead, she mostly traded at
Bartlett's, a small old-fashioned store three blocks from where the
Martin family lived.

"There aren't many small grocery stores left and since we have one
right in the neighborhood I like to patronize it," Jerry had heard his
mother say. She liked stores where the owner came to wait on you. But
Jerry suspected that one reason she traded at Bartlett's was because
she thought it was good for a boy to run errands.

Going to the store was Jerry's chief chore. "Just because her
grandfather had to chop wood and milk cows before breakfast when he
was a boy, she thinks she should keep _me_ busy," he grumbled to
himself as he went in the house. "Why do I have to go to the store?
Bartlett delivers. Why can't she telephone her order and have it
delivered?"

He knew that the answer to that was more than his mother's desire to
keep him busy. It was partly because she did not like to plan meals
ahead. A brisk cold day might make her feel like having pork chops and
hot applesauce for dinner. Or for a warm day, a platter of cold cuts
and deviled eggs.

"It's just the day for calves' liver and bacon," she might say when
Jerry got home from school in the afternoon. And she would send him to
the store for a pound and a half of fresh calves' liver cut thin, "the
way Mr. Bartlett knows I like it." A meal, his mother thought, should
match her mood or the weather. She kept a few frozen vegetables on
hand in case of need, but she much preferred fresh vegetables, freshly
cut steaks and chops--fresh almost anything which could be bought
fresh.

"I know it's a frozen food age but I still prefer my meat and
vegetables fresh," Mrs. Martin often said. That meant a lot of trips
to the store. Too many, Jerry thought. Especially on Saturdays, when
she needed a lot of things.

His mother was in the kitch