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."