"To be sure; and I always said if you'd think more about others, you wouldn't be so sorry for yourself," Grandma replied. Jimmie scowled at the sermon, but he went in and got his books, and the two boys sat up against the shack wall till dark, Jimmie telling stories to match the pictures. It was a week before they could repeat that pleasant hour. Next day both were ill with the fever that was sweeping the hop camp. Next time the nurses came they had medicines and suggestions for Grandma. They liked her, and looked smilingly at the clock and approvingly at Carrie and at the covered garbage can and at the food draped with mosquito netting. "We're going to have to enforce those rules," they told Grandma. "There wouldn't be half the sickness if everyone minded as you do." That evening people from all parts of the camp gathered to discuss the renewed orders: Italians, Mexicans, Americans, Indians. "They says to my mother," a little Indian girl confided to Rose-Ellen, "'You no cover up your grub, we throw him out!'" She laughed into her hands as if it were a great joke. "They do nothing but talk," said Angelina. Next day the camp had a surprise. Along came the nurses and men with badges to help them. Into shack after shack they went, inspecting the food supplies. Rose-Ellen, staying home with sick Jimmie, watched a nurse trot out of the Serafini shack, carrying long loaves of bread and loops of sausage, alive with flies, while Mrs. Serafini shouted wrathfully after her. Into the garbage pail popped the bread and sausage and back to the shack trotted the nurse for more. That night the camp buzzed like a swarm of angry bees, with threats of what the pickers would do to "them fresh nurses." Grandpa, resting on his doorsill, said, "You just keep cool. They got the law on their side; we couldn't do a thing. Besides, if you'll hold your horses long enough to see this out, you may find they're doing you a big kindness." The people went on grumbling, but they covered their food, since they must do so or lose it. And they had to admit that there was much less sickness from that time on. "Foolishness!" Mrs. Serafini persisted, unwilling to give in. Yet Rose-Ellen, playing with Baby Pepe, discovered that her hot old swaddlings had been taken off at last. Perhaps Mrs. Serafini was learning something from the nurses after all. "If you could show me the rest of my aflabet, Rose-Ellen," Jimmie begged, "I could teach Pedro." "But, goodness!" Rose-Ellen exclaimed. "You never would let us teach you anything, Jimmie. What's happened to you?" "Well, it's different. I got to keep ahead of Pedro," he explained, and every night he learned a new lesson. [Illustration: Rose-Ellen teaching Jimmie] Of all the family, though, Jimmie was the only contented one. Most of the trouble centered round Dick. He was fourteen now, and not only his voice, but his way, was changing. Through the day he picked hops, but when evening came, he was off and away.