"If only there was a Center," Rose-Ellen complained, "or if they even had room for us in school. I feel as if I'd scream, staying in this horrid tent so much." "I didn't know," said Daddy, "that there was a place in our whole country where you couldn't live decent and send your kids to school if you wanted to." It was pleasant in the grapefruit grove, where the rich green trees made good-smelling aisles of clean earth, and the men picked the pale round fruit ever so carefully, clipping it gently so as not to bruise the skin and cause decay. It hardly seemed to belong to the same world as the ill-smelling pickers' camp of rags, boards, and tin. Dick lost his job after the first few days. He had been hired because he was so tall and strong; but the foreman said he was bruising too much fruit. At first Grandma said she was glad he was fired, for he had been making himself sick eating fruit. But she was soon sorry that he had nothing to do. "And them young rapscallions you run with teach you words and ways I never thought to see in a Beecham," Grandma scolded. But if camp was hard for them all, it was hardest for Grandma and Jimmie and Sally, who seemed always ailing. "We've got to grit our teeth and hang on," said Grandma. Then came the Big Storm. All day the air had been heavy, still; weatherwise pickers watched the white sky anxiously. In the middle of the night, Rose-Ellen woke to the shriek of wind and the crack of canvas. Then, with a splintering crash, the tent-poles collapsed and she was buried under a mass of wet canvas. At first she could hear no voice through the howling wind and battering rain. Then Sally's wail sounded, and Grandma's call: "Rose-Ellen! Jimmie! Dick! You all right?" Until dawn the Beechams could only huddle together in the small refuge Daddy contrived against the dripping, pricking blackness. When day came, the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but fitfully, as if they, too, were tired out. The family scurried around putting up the tent and building a fire and drying things out before the men must go to the grove. Rose-Ellen and Dick and even Jimmie felt less dismal when they steamed before the washtub stove and ate something hot. [Illustration: Putting up the tent] Grandma and Sally felt less relief. Sally's cheeks were hot and red, and she turned her head from side to side, crying and coughing. Grandma was saying, "My land, my land, I'd give five years of my life to be in my own house with this sick little mite!" when a smooth gray head thrust aside the tent flap and a neighborly voice said, "Oh, mercy me!" Then without waiting for invitation, a crisp gingham dress followed the gray head in. "Is she bad sick? Have you-all had the doctor? I'm Mrs. King, from town."