His searching fingers found the partially concealed latch on the right side of the frame, and after the usual struggle of wrenching and tugging, managed to open the picture door. Foster and Davey, two dirty owls, blinked in the sudden light, tear tracks shining on their cheeks. "Oh, darling!" cried Mrs. Blake, hugging Foster out of the dumb-waiter; then she reached for Davey and hugged him out, too. "Great Scott, those ropes are _ancient_!" said Mr. Blake. "Thank the Lord they didn't fail! Luckily they were closed away from the weather all this time. Otherwise--" But he left the sentence unfinished. Mrs. Blake was so relieved that she began to scold. "Never again, Foster, do you hear? _Never!_ It was a dreadfully stupid thing to do! Those ropes are more than fifty years old: maybe even sixty or sixty-five! They might very well have broken and then--" But she, too, left the sentence unfinished and gave her son another hug instead. Foster was so relieved that he began to boast. "It was neat! I yanked that old jalopy up till it hit the top, bang! And then I yanked it down till it hit the bottom, bang! And then I yanked it up again, and I bet that old jalopy never went so fast before. It was neat, wasn't it, Dave?" "Ye-es," Davey said. "But I guess we better never do it again." "Nope," said Foster soberly, remembering the pitch-black shaft. "I guess we better never." "But why in the world do you suppose Mrs. Brace-Gideon had a dumb-waiter landing in her bedroom?" Portia asked. "And why did she hide it with that picture?" "Mrs. Brace-Gideon was a lady of leisure," her mother said. "She probably took her breakfast in bed. The dumb-waiter would bring her tray up each morning, nice and hot, from the kitchen pantry." "And the painting, no doubt, was put there to conceal a plain functional door with what she considered to be a thing of beauty," said Mr. Blake, studying the picture. Portia thought of the dumb-waiter and the sheep-lady, and Baron Bloodshed, and the crystal chandelier, and all the other curious or lovely things they had discovered. "What a place!" she said thoughtfully. "You know what this house is, Mother? Daddy? It is a house of astonishment!" 6 _The House of Astonishment_ It was indeed a house of astonishment. The day before the last day of spring vacation, Mr. Caduggan, who had been having what he called "a jawb" getting the attic door open, finally _did_ get it open and mounted the steep stairs beyond it carefully, testing the treads. A few minutes after he had reached the top he came licketty-splitting down again, with Popeye at his heels in a three-legged run. "Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Blake!" shouted Mr. Caduggan. "Oh, Mrs. Bla-ake!" Portia was startled from her room by his intemperate bellows, and Mr. Caduggan drew up short at sight of her. "Where's your mama, Portia?"