Bunny went up to the Rascum place to see Ruth and ask her about it. The “Superintendent of Horticultural Operations” had gone on strike with the boss-carpenter, but they were still occupying the bungalow, and Ruth did the work for Dad, whenever he occupied the cabin. Ruth said that Paul couldn’t get out here any more, he was sleeping on some sacks of straw in the union headquarters, where he worked about twenty hours a day. So Meelie was staying with her sister, and they spent all their spare time baking things, and old Mr. Watkins came, with the same old horse hitched to the same old wagon, and carried the things to Paradise, where they were sold to the strikers. They had closed up their stand at the Watkins tract, because there wasn’t nobody there but guards, and they wouldn’t feed no guards, not if they starved. So spoke Meelie, who was a little chatterbox; and Ruth looked at Bunny with some embarrassment, thinking that wasn’t proper talk before him. But Bunny said he wasn’t strong for guards himself, it had made him sort of sick to see them on the place that was supposed to be his. And Meelie said the man that was in charge at their place wasn’t a bad fellow, he had been a forester and fire-guard; but some of them others was awful mean, and Pap was a-scairt for the girls to go on the road at night, they cussed something fierce, and they had liquor all the time. There was an alluring odor of hot gingerbread in the kitchen, and Bunny had not yet had his lunch; so the girls set the little table, and the three sat down, and had a meal of scrambled eggs and potatoes, and bread and butter, and goat’s milk and gingerbread and strawberries—for the plants which Paul had set out had been diligently tended by Ruth, who couldn’t bear to let living things suffer, even green ones. Ruth was now a young lady of almost eighteen, the same age as Bunny, but she felt a lot older, as girls do. Her fair hair was done up on the top of her head, and you saw her bare legs no longer. She always looked nice working in the kitchen, because then her cheeks were rosy; she was competent in her own domain, and told you to sit down and not mess things up trying to help. She had the bright blue eyes of all the Watkins family; in her case they went with a candid, quiet gaze that seemed to go to the depths of you, and make both deception and unkindness impossible.