As they came up over the ridge in the woods, they had their first glimpse of Gone-Away Lake; Portia's first glimpse since September.
"Half a year!" she exclaimed. "Jule, do you realize it's half a year since I've been here?"
The place looked different, too. In the great swamp the old reeds had died down; just visible among them were the new ones rising: millions of little light green spears. But Craneycrow Island appeared the same, with its somber evergreens, and across the swamp the battered resort houses with their tipsy porches and tottering turrets seemed no more damaged than they had in the fall. The strange scene, which some people might have found desolate, was to Portia and Julian the most welcome sight in the world.
"And look, there's the dear, beautiful, glorious Machine!" cried Portia.
The Machine, lofty and narrow, was an ancient Franklin automobile, far older than Portia and Julian; quite a lot older even than their parents. It had large staring headlights that gave it an expression of alarm, a roof like the roof of a carriage, and a great deal of ornamental brass, highly polished. This strange vehicle was Mr. Pindar Payton's pride and joy, and to ride in it, as it rattled and snorted and jiggled and chugged, was a most exhilarating experience, as the children knew. Now, however, it stood haughty and silent in Mr. Payton's front yard.
"And there's Uncle Pin coming out of the house!" shouted Portia, breaking into a gallop. "Uncle Pin! Uncle Pin! Here I am back again!"
She leaped like an antelope down the slope and then along the curving path that circled the swamp and at last, breathless, flung herself into Mr. Payton's outstretched arms. Behind her came Julian, rattling and clanking. He always clanked when he ran, being prudently equipped on any outing with a camera, field glasses, a collecting case (and sometimes a canteen and a lunch box), all hung around his neck on straps. "Because you never know," he said. "This might be the one time I'd see a prothonotary warbler or find a rare specimen of something or other."
When Portia kissed Mr. Payton, it was like kissing a basket because of his beard.
"Let me look at you, my dear," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and holding her a little away, to see her better. "By Jupiter, you're a sight for sore eyes!"
"So are you, Uncle Pin," Portia said. She loved the way he looked: his blue eyes under strong black brows, his snow-white beard and mustache; his shabby but distinguished clothes, especially the broad-brimmed hat he always wore. She thought it had a dashing air.
"Well, by Jove!" Mr. Payton exclaimed. "This calls for a celebration indeed. Let us go at once to my sister's house and see what she can provide in the way of celebration material."
He led the way. Portia skipped behind him along the narrow well-known path, and Julian, clanking faintly, brought up the rear. To the right lay the broad swamp, shorn by winter of its reeds; to the left stood the old houses in their neglected yards. They were a tatterdemalion lot, with shutters hanging from hinges, front steps skewed crooked, porches sagging: the Delaney house, the Vogelhart house, the Tuckertown house (where the children had a clubroom in the attic), and all the others, including the one that had ceased even to be a house. The Castle Castle, named for the family who had built it, had collapsed years before in a bad storm and lay now in a great heap of rubble, all scrawled over with a withered vine.
"Oh, it's so beautiful here!" Portia sighed. "It's so heavenly and beautiful to be back."
At the extreme end of the raggedy row was the house Mrs. Cheever had chosen to live in, somewhat more respectable looking than the others. As they approached it, there was a sound of barking from within. Portia knew that must be Tarrigo, still another of Katy's children.
The door flew open and out came Mrs. Cheever, so delighted that she almost danced as she hurried forward on the path to meet them. Tarrigo bounced about her, barking.
"How happy I am to see you!" exclaimed the old lady, embracing Portia. "How wonderful to have you back!"
She looked as though she had stepped straight out of a much earlier era, for she wore only those clothes that had been stored in her family's house—the Big House, as they called it—when they had left it more than fifty years before. "Why buy new ones?" she had said. "The material is superior, and I never got fat, thank fortune, so everything still fits: my clothes, my mother's, my sisters—why, I have enough to last me till I die!" For this reason Mrs. Cheever's dresses were always long and sweeping, all her hats were large and queer, and her blouses had high collars made of lace, with little stiffenings of bone.
Today she wore a skirt of scarlet wool and a blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves.
"You have no coat, Aunt Minnehaha; you'll catch cold!" Portia said.
"Nonsense. People don't catch cold when they are happy, and I am very, very happy. Yes, indeed I am. Silence, Tarrigo, silence!"
Tarrigo kept right on barking. He was in a cheerful frame of mind and thought the world should know about it.
"Well, he's really just a puppy still," Mrs. Cheever explained indulgently. "I'm sure he'll learn in time. Silence, Tarry dear."
Tarrigo barked with renewed vigor.
"QUIET, SIR!" roared Mr. Payton in a fearful voice, and Tarrigo with a reproachful glance stopped in mid-bark and was still.
"Firmness is what is required," said Mr. Payton firmly, but as they entered Mrs. Cheever's house, Portia saw him bend to pat the dog. "No hard feelings, eh, old fellow?" Tarrigo's stump of a tail wagged in reply.
Mrs. Cheever owned a splendid parlor, heavily infested with furniture and objects, but her true living room—the one where everything took place—was her kitchen, and it was into this that she led them now. It was a spacious room with white walls, a huge grandmotherly kitchen range that cackled and purred with the fire that was in it, two comfortably cushioned rocking chairs, several other plain sitting chairs, many shining pots and pans, and a shelf holding a row of ancient dolls, all neatly dressed, that Mrs. Cheever had rescued from the Tuckertowns' house, Bellemere. They had belonged to her childhood friend, Baby-Belle Tuckertown, who, like Portia, had never really cared for dolls.
"They are company for me," Mrs. Cheever said. "I enjoy their little faces."
"Minnie, my dear, what have we on the premises in the way of a celebration collation?" Mr. Payton inquired, stroking his mustache, once to the right, once to the left.
"How I wish you would not call me Minnie!" his sister objected. "Though why I should still mind after more than seventy years, I do not know. Indeed I do not."
"It's the same with me." Portia sighed. "I hate being called 'Porsh,' but still they call me it. And I guess they always will."
"Well, I never shall," Mrs. Cheever assured her, and she went into the larder to see what she could provide in the way of refreshment.
In the end she returned with a bottle of cherry mead (to which her brother was partial), a loaf of fresh bread, and a jar of blackberry jam.
"And the kettle is just on the boil," she said. "Whoever cares for tea shall have it."
Portia had a cup of cambric tea and that was all. She stared as Julian wolfed down bread and jam.
"I don't see how you do it," she remarked in some indignation. "You ate about a hundred and fifty-three cookies and brownies less than an hour ago. Why aren't you fat?"
"I never get fat," Julian said comfortably. "It all turns into gristle. Gristle and muscle. Look at that." He flexed his arm and the biceps humped up obediently.
"Then why don't you get indigestion?" Portia persisted. "You ought to."
"Never get indigestion," said Julian complacently. "My stomach knows who's boss."
"We were the same when we were boys," Mr. Payton said. "Tarquin Tuckertown and I. We had a griddlecake eating contest once, I recollect. I managed to eat twenty-two. But Tark, Tark Tuckertown ate thirty! Strange," he said, taking out his pipe to fill it. "I have never, since that day, been tempted by a griddlecake."
Mrs. Cheever thought it might be nice to change the subject. "How is Foster, the dear little chap?" she asked.
"He's worried because he isn't losing any teeth," Portia told her.
"Well, there's a new wrinkle!" said Mr. Payton, tamping down tobacco with his thumb. "People's problems differ, for a fact."
They watched the ritual of getting the pipe to start. Mr. Payton kept drawing on it, sucking in his cheeks, then putt-putting with his lips, as he held first one match flame, then another, to the bowl. At last a red glow curled and crinkled the tobacco grains. A comfortable fragrance of smoke was added to the other fragrances of the kitchen.
Julian loosened his belt one notch and sighed with satisfaction.
"Aunt Minnehaha, that was suave," he said. "Suave" was a word he had picked up during the winter. It performed the same service as his other words of approval, "keen," "neat," and "nifty," and was in frequent use.
"You ought to be able to make it to suppertime, now," Portia commented loftily.
"Listen to you; you sound about forty-five," Julian said, unperturbed and grinning.
It was cozy in the warm, well-ordered kitchen. The wind sounded like distant surf; the stove purred. Just outside the window that faced south, Mrs. Cheever had a bird-feeding stand. "Minnie's avian snack-bar," Mr. Payton called it. Birds were busy there: nuthatches shaped like little torpedoes; chickadees with black skullcaps.
"And when the cardinal comes, scarlet, with his stylish crest, I feel as if a prince had been to visit," Mrs. Cheever said.
"When are you going to see your new house?" asked Mr. Payton.
"Tomorrow morning," Portia told him. "They thought it was too late today."
"It is late, too," Julian said, looking at Mrs. Cheever's peaceful clock. "Come on, Porsh; we'd better get cracking."
"I shall run you home in the Machine," Mr. Payton decided.
"Oh, no, sir, that won't be necessary," Julian said. Portia had often noticed that Mr. Payton and his sister had what she called "a politening effect" on Julian. On her, too, for that matter.
"But yes it is necessary, Jule!" she cried now. "Oh, yes, please, Uncle Pin! I haven't had a ride in the Machine since last September!"
"By all means, then, by all means," said Mr. Payton, rising. "I'll just go and fetch my ulster; you two can come along with me, and then we'll be off. Do you wish to come, Min?"
"No thank you, Pin. I do not care to tear about the countryside."
(The Franklin's maximum speed was twenty miles an hour.)
They said good-by to Mrs. Cheever and Tarrigo, and stepped outdoors. Already, because of the clouded sky the day was darkening. The houses by the path looked gaunt and lonely; wind sounded in their gaping halls and porches, so that they reminded one of a collection of gigantic blackened sea shells. It was spooky, it really was, and Portia, last in single file, kept so close to Julian that she stepped the shoe off his heel.
"Ow," Julian said. "What's the matter? Scared?"
"A little bit," Portia admitted.
"Well, you can go ahead of me, then, if you want," Julian offered magnanimously, and Portia was glad to accept.
Mr. Payton's house did not look spooky. Though it was shabby, it was neatly mended here and there, and a tidy doormat lay on the front step. The striped cat, Fatly, was sitting in a window, looking out, and Portia, of course, had to go in and pay her respects to him. These he acknowledged gracefully by turning on his purr.
Mr. Payton draped himself in his ulster, returned the dashing hat to his head, and threw open the door.
"Avaunt, then, Philosophers," he said. (This was a name he often called them, since the club they maintained in the Tuckertowns' old attic was known officially as the Philosophers' Club.)
Outside in the gathering twilight, the Machine stood waiting proudly. Portia, from habit, climbed into the back seat, while Mr. Payton and Julian took turns winding the crank. The Machine was sometimes stubborn about starting, but today it decided to be kind, and after a cough and a snort, the motor came to life and the whole ancient automobile began shuddering and syncopating noisily. Mr. Payton and Julian leaped into the front seat, Mr. Payton gave a loud trumpet blast on the horn because he felt like it, and off they went.
Portia, jouncing about on the slippery back seat, was perfectly happy: riding high, with the wind snapping through her hair, and all the world going by in a jiggle. Nobody talked because in order to talk above the motor you had to yell, and nobody felt like yelling.
All too soon they were turning in at the Jarmans' drive and all too soon standing on the Jarmans' doorstep waving good-by as the old Machine, a figure of skin and bones, went dancing spryly off toward Gone-Away.
"You know what I wish, Mother?" Portia said, later that evening. "I just wish we could stay here all through the spring till summertime, and never have to go back to the city or to school until the fall."
"Darling, it won't be for very long," her mother told her. "Only a few weeks, really. And we still have nine days here ahead of us, remember."
"I know," Portia said. She appreciated her mother's talent for making things look better and gave her a hug to show it.
Before she went to bed that night, Portia opened the window wide. Cold damp air came in, bringing a smell of old soaked leaves, of soaked earth. There was a sound of wind in branches, and another sound, too: the spangled, silver-noted calling of the peepers, the first sweet jingling bell notes of the spring.