"Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" cried Portia, giving her a hug. "I'm so glad to see another girl!" After the flurry of greetings, Tom Parks sat down on the porch steps with a heavy groan. "I bet I've melted off five pounds." "Better melt off twenty more," Julian advised him kindly. They all looked very hot from their long walk. Their cheeks were strawberry red, their noses spangled with sweat, and their hair was soaking. "I bet you could fry an egg on my hat," Joe Felder said. "I mean it's hot, man, _hot_!" "Well, cheer up, though." Portia comforted them. "Uncle Pin is going to show us a place to swim." "_If_ it's still there," the old gentleman amended. "Oh, boy, I hope it is!" Tom said fervently. Then his face fell. "We didn't bring any bathing suits. Heck!" But Mrs. Cheever, it seemed, was equal to any occasion. She recalled that in one of the trunks that had been brought from the Big House, she had seen a quantity of ancient bathing suits, all sizes, that had long ago been worn by the Payton children. "As Portia says, we were a very 'keeping' family. Thank fortune," Mrs. Cheever observed. "Girls, come with me to my storeroom, will you?" And soon their arms were laden with the old wool bathing suits, smelling of moth balls so strongly that, as Lucy said, "You could lean against it." "I advise you each to wear a boy's suit," Mrs. Cheever told them. "Good gracious, when I think of what we had to wear! Dresses with skirts and collars and sleeves! Stockings and sand shoes! _Hats_, straw hats, tied under our chins! I wonder they didn't make us wear gloves!" Each boy's suit consisted of a striped tunic and striped trousers. "It was the fashion then," said Mrs. Cheever. "Stripes were considered very continental." Packed into the Franklin, Mr. Payton and the children steamed along the road to the hot highway, contributing an unusual odor of moth balls to the day. The highway danced with heat and shimmered with puddle mirages; and once Mr. Payton stopped the car so that they could watch the phenomenon of a turtle hurrying, _trotting_, across the blazing asphalt that burned its feet. "I never saw a turtle run before. I never knew they could," Julian said in awe. "They keep their secret well," Mr. Payton agreed. "It occurs to me that that old fable of the tortoise and the hare may well be simply propaganda put out by the hare." They drove through the red-hot main street of Pork Ferry, where people carrying bags of groceries stopped to gape at the loud majestic progress of the Franklin. Mr. Payton bowed cordially to left and right, like visiting royalty. After they left the village and the highway, they drove along a wooded road, slowly ascending. The Franklin huffed and struggled, and all of them, except Mr. Payton, got out and walked to make things easier for it. "Just about here, I'd say," Mr. Payton announced finally, applying the brake. "There seems to be the remnant of a footpath."