The Grapes of Wrath. Quite near the beginning. The family have been evicted and is on the road. They stop to buy bread at a diner. The children are looking at sweets on the counter and what happens is one the very few acts of kindness in the book.
He dug in the pouch with a forefinger, located a dime, and pinched in for it. When he put it down on thecounter he had a penny with it. He was about to drop the penny back into the pouch when his eye fell on theboys frozen before the candy counter. He moved slowly down to them. He pointed in the case at big long sticksof striped peppermint. "Is them penny candy, ma'am?"
Mae moved down and looked in. "Which ones?"
"There, them stripy ones."
The little boys raised their eyes to her face and they stopped breathing; their mouths were partly opened, theirhalf-naked bodies were rigid
"Oh them. Well, no them's two for a penny."
"Well, gimme two then, ma'am." He placed the copper cent carefully on the counter. The boys expelled theirheld breath softly. Mae held the big sticks out.
"Take 'em," said the man
They reached timidly, each took a stick, and they held them down at their sides and did not look at them. Butthey looked at each other, and their mouth corners smiled rigidly with embarrassment.
"Thank you, ma'am." The man picked up the bread and went out the door, andhthe little boys marched stifflybehind him, the red-striped sticks held tightly against their legs. They leaped like chipmunks over the front seatand onto the top of the load, and they burrowed back out of sight like chipmunks.
The man got in and started his car, and with a roaring motor and a cloud of blue oily smoke the ancient Nashclimbed up on the highway and went on its way to the west. From inside the restaurant the truck drivers andMae and Al stared after them.
Big Bill wheeled back. "Them wasn't two-for-a-cent candy," he said
"What's that to you?" Mae said fiercely.
"Them was nickel apiece candy," said Bill