Only three of them: Foster and Portia and Mr. Blake took the train from Creston the next morning. Mrs. Blake would have to stay behind for several weeks until the house was in more livable shape. Portia and Foster would miss their mother, of course, but they knew they wouldn't fare too badly. Mrs. Bryant would clean the house each morning. Mr. Blake knew how to cook steaks, chops, hamburgers, and hot dogs. He could also bake a potato. Portia knew how to cook pancakes and fudge. Foster knew how to make chocolate milk. As for Gulliver, his food came out of a can. "So we'll be all right, we'll be fine," Mr. Blake assured his wife. "Of course you will, I know you will," she said. "But, Paul darling, do see that Foster really _brushes_ his teeth, not just strokes them. And do watch him with the catsup. If you let him, he'd pour it on his food the way Vesuvius poured lava on Pompeii. I don't see how he knows what he's eating. And then about Portia--" But fortunately for Portia, the train arrived at that moment. From its windows, after only ten days, the country they traveled through already seemed less the property of winter. All the snow patches were gone, and the trees, especially the willows, showed a color of life in their twigs. "It won't really be very long before we come back," Portia said, to comfort both herself and Foster. "It only seems long." "That's just the same as being," Foster said. 7 _Another Beginning_ But at last it was June. At last school was over and summer, huge as an ocean, lay before them. "September is forever away!" sang Portia, sitting on her suitcase to shut it. "Forever and ever and ever away!" This time when they returned to the country, Gulliver went with them because they drove there. They drove in their own brand-new car: "Bought," as Mrs. Blake explained to Julian later, "by courtesy of the Sheraton octagonal drum table." She sighed when she said it: she had hated parting with the drum table. "But if we're going to have a house in the country miles from any town, we must have a car." "And that's the only way we could afford it," Portia added, "because of buying the house and fixing it up and all." They made the journey on a wonderful day: June at its most fragrant and expansive. Foster, to the relief of all, seemed to have outgrown his car sickness; and Gulliver, about whom there had been some doubt, proved to be a courteous passenger, neither trampling nor barking.