"He's like the Irishman's flea," Grandma scolded, "and that gang he's running with are young scalawags." "Dick hasn't a lick of sense," Daddy agreed worriedly. "I'll have to tan him, if he keeps on lighting out every night. That gang set fire to a hop rack last week. They'll be getting into real trouble." "Dick thinks he's a man, now he's earning his share of the living," Grandpa reminded them. "When I was his age I had chores to keep me busy, and when you were his age you had gym, and the Y swimming pool. Here there's nothing for the kids in the evening except mischief." "Well, then," Grandma suggested, "why don't we pull up stakes and leave?" "They don't like you to leave till harvest's over," Daddy said. "But it would be great to get into apples in Washington, for instance. We'll have to get the boss to cash our pay tickets first." There came the trouble. The tickets would be cashed when harvest was done, not before. Grandma sagged when she heard. "I ain't sick," she said, "but I'm played out. If we could get where it was cooler and cleaner. . . ." "Well, we haven't such a lot of pay checks left." Grandpa looked at her anxiously. "Looks like, with prices at the company store so high, if we stayed another month we'd owe them instead of them owing us. We might cash our tickets in groceries and hop along." "Hop along is right," agreed Daddy. "Those tires were a poor buy. We haven't money for tires and gas both." "We'll go as fast as we can, and maybe we can get there before the tires bust," said Grandpa, trying to be gay. Jimmie didn't try. "I liked it here," he mumbled. "I bet Pedro'll cry if we go away. He can print his first name now, but how's he ever going to learn 'Serafini'?" 9: SETH THOMAS STRIKES TWELVE At once Daddy and Grandpa set to work on the Reo. It was an "orphan" car, no longer made, and its parts were hard to replace; so the men were always watching the junkyards for other old Reos. They had learned a great deal about the car in these months, and they soon had it on the road again. "Give you long enough," said Grandma, "and you'll cobble new soles on its tires and patch its innards. Looks like it's held together with hairpins now." Daddy drove with one ear cocked for trouble, and when anyone spoke to him he said, "Shh! Sounds like her pistons--or maybe it's her vacuum. Anyway, as soon as there's a good stopping place, we'll. . . ." But it was the tires that gave out first. Bang! Daddy's muscles bulged as he held the lurching car steady. One of the back tires was blown to bits. "Now can we eat?" Dick demanded. Daddy shook his head as he jumped out to jack up the car. "Got to keep moving. This is our last spare, and there isn't a single tire we can count on." Sure enough, they hadn't gone far before the familiar bumping stopped them. That last spare was flat. "Now," Daddy said grimly, "you may as well get lunch while I see whether I can patch this again."