his age you had gym, and the Y
swimming pool. Here there's nothing for the kids in the evening
except mischief."

"Well, then," Grandma suggested, "why don't we pull up stakes and
leave?"

"They don't like you to leave till harvest's over," Daddy said.
"But it would be great to get into apples in Washington, for
instance. We'll have to get the boss to cash our pay tickets
first."

There came the trouble. The tickets would be cashed when harvest
was done, not before. Grandma sagged when she heard. "I ain't
sick," she said, "but I'm played out. If we could get where it
was cooler and cleaner. . . ."

"Well, we haven't such a lot of pay checks left." Grandpa looked
at her anxiously. "Looks like, with prices at the company store
so high, if we stayed another month we'd owe them instead of
them owing us. We might cash our tickets in groceries and hop
along."

"Hop along is right," agreed Daddy. "Those tires were a poor buy.
We haven't money for tires and gas both."

"We'll go as fast as we can, and maybe we can get there before
the tires bust," said Grandpa, trying to be gay.

Jimmie didn't try. "I liked it here," he mumbled. "I bet Pedro'll
cry if we go away. He can print his first name now, but how's he
ever going to learn 'Serafini'?"

9: SETH THOMAS STRIKES TWELVE

At once Daddy and Grandpa set to work on the Reo. It was an
"orphan" car, no longer made, and its parts were hard to replace;
so the men were always watching the junkyards for other old Reos.
They had learned a great deal about the car in these months, and
they soon had it on the road again.

"Give you long enough," said Grandma, "and you'll cobble new
soles on its tires and patch its innards. Looks like it's held
together with hairpins now."

Daddy drove with one ear cocked for trouble, and when anyone
spoke to him he said, "Shh! Sounds like her pistons--or maybe
it's her vacuum. Anyway, as soon as there's a good stopping
place, we'll. . . ."

But it was the tires that gave out first. Bang! Daddy's muscles
bulged as he held the lurching car steady. One of the back tires
was blown to bits. "Now can we eat?" Dick demanded. Daddy shook
his head as he jumped out to jack up the car. "Got to keep
moving. This is our last spare, and there isn't a single tire we
can count on."

Sure enough, they hadn't gone far before the familiar bumping
stopped them. That last spare was flat.

"Now," Daddy said grimly, "you may as w