xcited over the
laundry tubs in the central building, and more interested in the
shower baths. Twice a day they washed themselves, and their
clothes were kept fresher than they had been for a long time.
Neighbors came calling, besides; and there were entertainments
every week, with the whole camp taking part.

"Seems like home," said Grandpa. "If only we could find work."

The nurse on duty found that the sore on Dick's hand was
scabies--the itch--picked up in some other camp, and she treated
and bandaged it carefully.

Every day the men went out hunting jobs, taking others with them
to share the cost of gasoline; and every day they came back
discouraged. Even in the fine camp, money leaked out steadily
for food. At last the Beechams gave up hope of finding work.
They set out for California, the fairyland of plenty, as they
thought.

At first California looked like any other state, but soon the
children began naming their discoveries aloud. "Lookit! Oranges
on trees!" "Roses! And those red Christmas flowers growing high
as the garage!" "Palm trees--like feather dusters stuck on
telegraph poles!"

"Little white houses and gardens!" crooned Grandma.

Soon, too, they saw the familiar posters: PICKERS WANTED; and
the Reo followed the signs to the fields.

They were pea-fields, this time, but Grandma, peering at the
pea-pickers' camp, cried, "My land, if this ain't Floridy all
over again!"

"Maybe the owner ain't got the cash to put up decent
chicken-coops for folks to live in," Grandpa sputtered, "but if I
was him I'd dig ditches for a living before I'd put humans into
pigpens like these."

"Let's go a piece farther," Grandma urged.

Grandpa fingered his old wallet. "Five dollars is the least we
can keep against the car breaking down. We've got six-fifty
now."

So for long months they worked in the peas and lived in the
"jungle" camp, pitching their tent at the very edge of its dirt
and smell.

Shacks of scrap tin, shingled with rusty pail covers, stood next
to shacks made of burlap and pasteboard cartons. Ragged tents
huddled behind the shacks, using the same back wall. Mattresses
that looked as if they came from the dump lay on the ground with
tarpaulins stretched above them as roofs, and these were the only
homes of whole families who lived and slept and ate in swarms of
stinging flies.

One of the few pleasant things was the Christian Center not very
far away. Every morning its car chugge