All the length of the drive, until it curved into the woods, Portia kept turning around and walking backward so she could watch her house.
"Remember last year just about now when Aunt Minnehaha told us about the Villa Caprice and said it gave her the creeps? And remember how it gave us the creeps first time we saw it? Well, just look at it now, Jule. Did you ever see anything so changed in all your life?"
Julian walked backward, too, for a minute; so did Foster and so did Davey, who had arrived as soon after breakfast as his mother would let him.
"And it's not even finished yet," Portia said.
They could see Mr. Caduggan up on a ladder putting a screen on a window. Joe Baskerville was putting on another. Popeye was sitting down watching them, and Gulliver was sitting down watching Popeye.
Mr. Ormond Horton had just arrived in his old pickup truck and was assembling his paint buckets, singing melodiously as he did so.
At the far end of the house, Eli Scaynes was down on his knees, setting out pansies. His faithful wheelbarrow waited at his side, with a rake and a shovel sucking out of it.
"I like to see neglected houses getting fixed," Portia said. "Of course I know houses can't possibly think, but sometimes I have a feeling they can feel. Do you ever, Jule?"
"Nope," said Julian, "I sure as heck don't."
He was no longer alone in his clanking. They all clanked. Everyone had a lunch box, and Portia in addition had a large basket filled with donations from the Villa Caprice. Julian had another. As for the two little boys, they were burdened with buckets and brushes. They were not carrying these things because they wished to but because that was the condition under which they had been allowed to come.
Foster permitted himself a grumble or two, but the day was so dazzling, the air was so ravishing, that the grumbles dried up in spite of him.
Emerging from the woods where everything seemed to be flying and singing, the four children approached the old houses of Gone-Away from the rear. In the weedy wastes that had once been gardens or back yards were relics left from an earlier day: the vine-trapped sleigh behind the Humboldt house, clothes posts silvered by a thousand weathers, the slatted skeleton of an old lawn swing. Some of the fences remained, half lost in weeds, with many of their pickets missing, like giant combs with broken teeth.
"Look, the barn swallows are nesting in Judge Chater's house again this year!"
"Swallows hate to change their habits," Julian said. "They're worse than grownups."
The fork-tailed birds, azure-blue in the sunlight, swooped and curved in and out of the tottering cupola that crowned the decaying mansion. They used the air as fishes use a river; they seemed to swing and spin effortlessly on invisible currents.
"If I had to be a bird, I'd be a swallow," Foster said. "They have the best time flying. They look as if they do."
"If you were a bird, you'd have to eat bugs," Davey told him. "You'd have to eat worms. You'd like to eat worms. Oig. If anybody told me I had to be a bird, I wouldn't."
At the Tuckertown house they set their burdens down on the front doorstep. They had decided before getting down to work to pay a call first to Mr. Payton, because his house was nearest, and then to Mrs. Cheever.
"Because it's the polite thing to do," Julian said, his courteous Gone-Away manners descending on him like a mantle.
"And anyway because we want to," Foster added.
"Check."
Feeling as light as the swallows, now that their hands were free, the children ran along the footpath that lay between the Gone-Away houses and the swamp, connecting Mr. Payton's house at the extreme right to Mrs. Cheever's house at the extreme left.
As they neared Mr. Payton's house, a faint smell of goat was wafted toward them, mingling with all the other smells: roses, fresh grass, swamp water.
"Wind's from the north," Julian commented, not without logic, since Mr. Payton's house was at the north end of Gone-Away and he kept goats.
They found him busy in his vegetable garden at the far side of his house. The rows of vegetables, perfectly straight, were stripes of various greens except for two, which were strangely covered up with cloth.
"Good morning, good morning!" Mr. Payton called, delighted to see them. He took off his broad-brimmed hat, waving it in a flourish of welcome.
"Ma-a-a," called Uncle Sam, the billy goat, from his pen near the woods. Perhaps he meant it as a greeting.
"May I offer anyone a radish? Or a spring onion? Or a very young carrot? These are all my garden affords at present," Mr. Payton said, but for once nobody was hungry, not even Julian.
"We had waffles," Foster explained.
"Ah. Entirely understandable."
Near Mr. Payton's garden there was another just like it but without a fence around it. This was his rabbit or guest garden for animals. There was food there for any hungry rabbit, woodchuck, field mouse, or deer.
"To say nothing of the scoundrel blackbirds," he said with a frown. "Those rascals wait until the exact moment when the peas have reached perfection; then they walk along the rows and slit the pods with their bills, neat as if they were opening their mail, and there go your peas! Frustrating. Well, I tried everything. Scarecrows never scared them; I put a dozen pin wheels to a row; but they'd wait till the wind died down. Smart villains. Finally I struck on the idea of covering the peas in my garden with mosquito netting, as you see. Worked like a charm. Those birds can eat their own peas. Perfectly fair. But not mine. And it's a pleasure to frustrate them for a change!"
Fatly, the cat, came trotting along a furrow with his collar bell tinkling. He had the sleekness and softness of a healthy country cat. His eyes looked dazzled in the sunshine.
"I frustrate him, too, this time of year," Mr. Payton told them. "I feed him so handsomely each morning that he has no interest whatever in catching birds."
By this time, on a common impulse, they had moved away from the garden and were starting along the path in the direction of Mrs. Cheever's house. To the right of them, the wall of new reeds rippled and shivered; to the left, in the old door yards, persistent garden flowers bloomed again: iris, peonies, poppies, roses.
As they walked, the children remarked on changes in the scene.
"The Delaneys' porch has finally fallen off."
"Look at that big fat wisteria vine on the Vogelharts' barn. I don't remember that."
"The turret on the Thompsons' house is much more sideways than it was."
Aunt Minnehaha's chickens came trotting, helter-skelter, to meet them; her duck, stepping on its own feet, waddled out from under its shade of dock leaves. "Everything is just like last year," Julian said. "Except it's better."
"I know," Portia agreed. "That's because it's ours now, in a way; or else because we're its."
No barking sounded from Mrs. Cheever's house. They found her kitchen empty, but the rustling range and the ticking clock made it seem occupied.
"She's in her bog-garden, I'll be bound," Mr. Payton surmised, glancing into the square of looking glass above the sink and smoothing out his mustache. "Well, come along, Philosophers; we'll go and see."
"Her and Julian are Philosophers—" Foster started to say, but Portia interrupted him. "She and Julian, you mean, Foster."
"She and Julian are Philosophers, Uncle Pin, but me and Davey—"
"Foster! Davey and I," corrected his sister.
"—but Davey and I belong to another club, the Club of the Fang," Foster said proudly. "I'm the one that thought it up."
"I see. Very well then, come along Philosophers and Fangs."
So they went out again, by the front door this time, and there, yes, there beyond the reeds, beyond the water meadow and the dead tree that marked the entrance to the bog, they spotted Mrs. Cheever's bell-shaped hat.
"Further I shall not go," Mr. Payton stated. "I do not care for wading and I've brought no boots. Minnie's busy in her garden, and I'll return to mine. Farewell, Philosophers. Farewell, Fangs."
"Good-by, Uncle Pin."
Already the children were sitting on the ground, taking off their shoes and socks. Soon they were squelching cautiously through the forest of reeds. It was eventful walking. Frogs kept popping out of the way, and once something slithered and wriggled under Portia's foot.
"Man, can you squeal!" Julian said admiringly. "You sounded like the noon whistle at Pork Ferry."
"Well, heavens, I'm not in the habit of walking on snakes!"
Now they emerged from the reeds to the water meadow; Tarrigo saw them and came barking and splashing, sending showers of water sparks into the air.
Beyond, where water meadow turned to tufted bog, Mrs. Cheever stood waving to them with her trowel.
"Good morning, children, welcome! You're just in time to see the arethusas; they've survived another winter, thank fortune."
Great banks of sheep laurel were in bloom, deep rose color—"beautiful, but poisonous," Mrs. Cheever said. "That's why it has that name. Sheep have grazed on it and died." Clumps of wild flag made blue islands in a sea already blue with blue-eyed grass; but the arethusas were pink, each growing by itself, its flower shaped like a tiny half-open hand. Portia admired every one of them, and after that every grass pink, and every pitcher plant. She prowled and stooped and examined, wading in and out of water. At this time of year, when brooks and ponds were cold as ice, the bog water, thin and open to the sun, was as warm as her own skin.
"I love this place," Portia said. "I love the smell of it. It smells like a jungle near the Orinoco, or someplace."
"Or like a hothouse," Julian said.
Actually it smelled like both those things: steamy, rich, tropical, healthy. And it had so much to offer! Rare flowers for those who were interested in them; bog butterflies for people who were lepidopterists, like Julian; snakes for people who were herpetologists, like his friend Tom Parks; frogs and turtles for people who were seven years old, like Foster and Davey.
"But I suppose we ought to go and start our house cleaning," Portia said regretfully.
"I guess so, and anyway the mosquitoes are beginning." Julian gave himself a vigorous slap.
"We forgot to put on your Anti-Pest Decoction," Portia told Mrs. Cheever, and slapped herself.
"Well, run along then, run along; you'll be devoured!"
"We have to clean our club, too," Foster said importantly. "Come on, Dave; we haven't got all day."
"Dirt is patient; it will wait," said Mrs. Cheever calmly. "That's one thing."
After they had filled a bucket with water at Mrs. Cheever's pump, Portia and Julian returned to Bellemere. They clattered up the stairs from the plaster-littered wreck of the first floor, to the shabby melancholy of the second, and then to the cozy attic, which was their clubhouse.
It was decidedly in need of attention. Dust was everywhere, and dead spiders dotted the floor. Their old webs hung from the rafters in deserted swags; seeing them, Portia hastily tied a dustcloth around her head; then she went to work on them with her broom. Julian attacked the floor with his.
"Next thing is scrubbing," he said.
"And after that the waxing."
"Yes. And then the windows."
"Oh, there's such an enormous amount to be done," Portia moaned, exactly as her mother had done about the Villa Caprice and sounding just as happy.
So the morning passed. They really did work hard, but every now and then, because it was simply impossible not to, they ran down the stairs and out into the blazing June sunshine; just to breathe and listen and feel.
At noon they borrowed the great conch shell that hung by Mrs. Cheever's door, and Julian blew a blast on it to summon Foster and Davey from their clubhouse on Craneycrow Island. In a moment the little boys could be heard drumming across the bridge above the Gulper. They had spent a satisfactory morning, after rapidly abandoning the idea of house cleaning in favor of more congenial pursuits. They had lain on their stomachs on the bridge, dropping pebbles and watching the deadly Gulper suck them in; they had found ten new turtles for their turtlearium, all of which would soon escape; and they had conducted a frog hunt. In Foster's lunch box—he had prudently eaten his lunch early to make room for it—there was a bullfrog the size of a small puppy. Portia gave one of her noon-whistle squeals when she saw it.
"Listen; he's a very nice, gentle frog," Foster said reproachfully. "I'm going to keep him and raise him."
"He's already raised," Julian told Foster. "And if you keep him in captivity, he'll probably die."
"He will?" To their surprise, Foster looked rather relieved. "Well, O.K. I'll take him back and let him go then. Anyway, I was sort of afraid he'd scare me if he croaked in the night."
"He would have, too. That kind doesn't just croak; it goes off like a gun, boom!"
"You'll be all right; I'll let you go pretty soon," Foster told the frog; then he turned to his cousin. "I've named him already, though, and I named him after you: Julian Jarman Frog."
"Thanks a lot," Julian said. "I appreciate that a lot."
They ate their lunch lazily in the shade of the Vogelhart willow tree. Foster was persuaded to partake of a cooky. There was a noonday stillness on Gone-Away; only the red-winged blackbirds trilled and clucked, and the frog in the lunch box gave a sudden resounding boom.
"Yeeps!" said Foster. "He would have scared me all right."
After the little boys had departed, Julian and Portia lingered on, lying on their backs in the warm grass and looking straight into the sky.
"Not a cloud, not a bird, not a plane. Not a mosquito, even," Portia mused. "Just blue nothing. It makes you feel—I don't know—peaceful, I guess."
"M-m-m," Julian murmured noncommittally. It made him feel sleepy. He lay with his eyes half closed, chewing on a grass stem.
"Millions and trillions of miles of just blue nothing," Portia repeated dreamily. She liked that phrase.
"There goes a June bug, though. And up, way up, now, there's a hawk. And even if you can't see them, think of all the other things there are up there: satellites in orbit, meteors and meteorites, suns, moons, planets, stars; millions and billions and trillions of those! It doesn't make me feel peaceful, brother, it makes me feel nervous! 'Blue nothing,' nothing!"
"Honestly," was all Portia could think of to say to that.
Now a tiny plane went purring across the sky, very high, very slow to eyes grown accustomed to the flight of jets.
Portia lay thinking about the club. When they were through with the cleaning, and they almost were, they would decorate it with the things from the Villa Caprice: the painting of a starchily dressed young lady swinging on a crescent moon; the Tiffany glass lamp shade (they had no lamp in the club, but if they turned the shade upside down, it would look like a vase, and it was a beautiful thing: all the colors of the rainbow, melted). They also had been given the cast-iron pug-dog with which Mrs. Brace-Gideon had felled the burglar, and the procession of teakwood elephants, and many other treasures. When everything was in place, Portia would go out and pick a big bouquet of roses and iris, and that would be the finishing touch.
The distant plane made a peaceful, soothing sound. Very, very soothing....
Portia sat up abruptly and looked at her cousin.
"Jule, don't you dare go to sleep!" She began to tickle him mercilessly. "Wake up, wake up; we haven't finished working yet! Wake up this minute, Julian Jarman Frog!”