"What's all this?" Daddy demanded. He stood in the doorway staring at Grandpa and Grandma, and his bright dark eyes looked almost as unbelieving as they had when Mother slipped away from him. "You can't mean they want to take away our children?" Dick came to the door with half of Jimmie's funnies, his mouth open; and Jimmie hobbled in, bent almost double, thin hand on crippled knee. Julie slipped politely away. Then the news came out. The woman from the "Family Society" had called that day and had advised Grandma to put the children into a Home. When Grandma would not listen, the woman went on to the shop and talked with Grandpa. "Her telling us they wasn't getting enough milk and vegetables!" Grandma scolded, wiping her eyes with one hand and smoothing back Rose-Ellen's curls with the other. "Saying Jimmie'd ought to be where he'd get sunshine without roasting. Good as telling me we don't know how to raise children, and her without a young-one to her name." Grandpa blew his nose. "Well, it takes money to give the kids the vittles they ought to have." "I won't go away from my own house!" howled Jimmie. Rose-Ellen and Dick blinked at each other. It was one thing to scrap a little and quite another to be entirely apart. And the baby. . . . "Would Miss Piper take . . . Sally?" Rose-Ellen quavered. Grandma nodded, lips tight. "They shan't!" Rose-Ellen whispered. "Nonsense!" Daddy said hoarsely, his hands tightening on Jimmie's shoulder and Rose-Ellen's. "It's better for families to stick together, even if they don't get everything they need. Ma, you think it's better, don't you?" He looked anxiously at his parents and they looked pityingly at him, as if he were a boy again, and before they knew it the whole family were crying together, Grandpa and Daddy pretending they had colds. Then came a knock at the door, and Grandma mopped her eyes with her apron and answered. Julie's mother stood there, a comfortable brown woman with shining black hair and gold earrings, the youngest Albi enthroned on her arm. Mrs. Albi's eyebrows had risen to the middle of her forehead, and she patted Grandma's shoulder plumply. [Illustration: Mrs. Albi] "Now, now, now, now!" she comforted in a big voice. "All will be well, praise God. Julie, she tell me. All will be well." "How on earth can all be well?" Grandma protested. "I don't see no prospects." "This summer as you know," said Mrs. Albi, "we went into Jersey. For two months we all pick the berries. Enough we earn to put-it food into our mouth. And the keeds! They go white and skinny, and they come home, like you see it, brown and fat." Her voice rose and she waved the baby dramatically. "Not so good the houses, I would not lie to you. But we make like we have the peekaneeka. By night the cool fresh air blow on us and by day the warm fresh air. And vegetables and fruit so cheap, so cheap."