"But I like it here!" Jimmie burst out eagerly. "Do you know something? I'm going to learn to read! I colored my pictures the neatest of anyone in the class, and She put them all on the wall. So then I didn't mind telling her how I never learned to read and write and how Rose-Ellen wrote my letter to Jimmie Brown in Cleveland." He beamed so proudly that Grandpa, wringing a sheet for Grandma, looked sorrowfully at him over his glasses. "It's a pity you didn't tell her sooner, young-one," he said. "The cranberries will be over in a few more days, and we'll be going back." "Back to Philadelphia?" Rose-Ellen demanded. "Where? Not to a Home? I won't! I'd rather go on and shuck oysters like Pauline Isabel and her folks. I'd rather go on where they're cutting marsh hay. I'd rather--" "Well, now," Grandpa's words were slow, "what about it, kids? What about it, Grandma? Do we go back to the city and-and part company till times are better? Or go on into oysters together?" The tears stole down Jimmie's cheeks, but he didn't say anything. Daddy didn't say anything, either. He picked Sally up and hugged her so hard that she grunted and then put her tiny hands on his cheeks and peered into his eyes, chirping at him like a little bird. "I calculate we'll go on into oysters," said Grandpa. 3: SHUCKING OYSTERS This picnic way of living had one advantage; it made moving easy. One day the Beechams were picking; the next day they had joined with two other families and hired a truck to take them and their belongings to Oystershell, on the inlet of the bay near by. Pauline Isabel's family were going to a Negro oystershucking village almost in sight of Oystershell. "It's sure nice there!" Pauline assured them happily. "I belong to a girls' club that meets every day after school; in the Meth'dis' church. We got a sure good school, too, good as any white school, up the road a piece." The Beechams said good-by to Pauline's family, who had become their friends. Then they said good-by to Miss Abbott. That was hard for Jimmie. He butted his shaven little head against Her and then limped away as fast as he could. The ride to Oystershell was exciting. Autumn had changed the look of the land. "God has taken all the red and yellow he's got, and just splashed it on in gobs," said Rose-Ellen as they traveled toward the seashore. "What I like," Dick broke in, "is to see the men getting in the salt hay with their horses on sleds." The marshes were too soft to hold up anything so small as a hoof, so when farmers used horses there, they fastened broad wooden shoes on the horses' feet. Nowadays, though, horses were giving place to tractors. The air had an increasingly queer smell, like iodized salt in boiling potatoes. The Beechams were nearing the salt-water inlets of the bay, where the tides rose and fell like the ocean-of which the inlets were part.