ree it was a stifling cage on a hot day.

They were all going to work, except Jimmie and Sally. It would
take all of them, new hands that they were, to care for the
twenty acres they were to work. Mr. Lukes said that children
under sixteen were not supposed to be employed, but of course
they could always help their parents. Daddy said that was one
way to get around the Child Labor Law.

So the Beechams were to thin the beets and hoe them and top them,
beginning the last of May and finishing in October, and the pay
would be twenty-six dollars an acre. The government made the
farmers pay that price, no matter how poor the crop was.

"Five hundred and twenty dollars sounds like real money!" Daddy
rejoiced.

"Near five months, though," Grandma reckoned, "and with prices
like they are, we're lucky to feed seven hungry folks on sixty
dollars a month. And we're walking ragbags, with our feet on the
ground. And them brakebands--and new tires."

"Five times sixty is three hundred," Rose-Ellen figured.

"You'll find it won't leave more than enough to get us on to the
next work place," Grandpa muttered.

It was lucky the chicken-coop was in sight of their acres.
Before she left home in the early morning, Grandma saw to it that
there was no fire in the old-new washtub stove, and that Sally's
knitted string harness was on, so that she could not reach the
irrigation ditch, and that Carrie was tethered.

The beets, planted two months ago, had come up in even green
rows. Now they must be thinned. With short-handled hoes the
grown people chopped out foot-long strips of plants. Dick and
Rose-Ellen followed on hands and knees, and pulled the extra
plants from the clumps so that a single strong plant was left
every twelve inches.

The sun rose higher and hotter in the big blue bowl of sky.
Rose-Ellen's ragged dress clung to her, wet with sweat, and her
arms and face prickled with heat. Grandma looked at her from
under the apron she had flung over her head.

"Run and stretch out under the cottonwood awhile," she said. "No
use for to get sunstroke."

Rose-Ellen went silently, thankfully. It was cooler in the shade
of the tree. She looked up through the fluttering green leaves
at the floating clouds shining in the sun. Jimmie hobbled around
her, driving Sally with her knitted reins, but they did not keep
their sister awake. The sun was almost noon-high when she opened
her eyes, and she hurried guiltily back to