Julian had started a paper route that took him half the morning, and the other boys, too, had part-time jobs. Mr. Blake's vacation was over; he had had to return to his work in the city and only came out for weekends, but his weekend projects were so numerous that, as he said, he had "to get back to the office to relax." As for Mrs. Blake, she was seldom seen without something in her hands: hammer and nails, or paint and paintbrush, or lengths of fabric. "You really never get finished with a house," she said contentedly. But sometimes she just wandered quietly from room to room, gloating. The Villa Caprice continued to offer surprises: certain tall spikey plants near the house turned out to be lilies: great freckled fragrant ones. A drawer in the library desk was discovered to be full of jigsaw puzzles, dominoes, playing cards, and a chess set. Some surprises were not so pleasant: the leak that appeared in the dining room; the peculiar temperament of the bathroom plumbing; the fact that the drawing-room fireplace smoked in rainy weather. Gradually they became familiar with the sounds peculiar to the house: the stairtread in the hall stairs that chirped like a cricket when anyone stepped on it; the swing door into the dining room that whooshed and sighed; the way the chimneys rumbled when the wind was high. All these were nice because they were the sounds of home. "This place _is_ home, now," Portia said. "And the apartment in New York is just the place we stay in in wintertime." "Winter. Ugh," said Foster. "I wish it wouldn't get here for eleven years." But the summer, as summers are apt to do, was spinning itself out fast, too fast. Already it was August. "It's funny," Portia observed. "I never really believe in school in summertime. I know it exists, and all, but it just doesn't seem really _real_." "Mine does," Lucy said. "I can smell it if I think about it. I can smell the blackboard and the varnish on my desk and the wet floor in the hall when they've scrubbed it." "I move we change the subject," suggested Tom Parks. "Is there another stuffed egg on the premises?" They had met, all of them, for a picnic at Gone-Away--both the official groups, of course: the members of the Fang Club, all two of them; the members of the Philosophers' Club, all five. It was exactly the sort of day for watermelon, so that was what they had for dessert. Foster luxuriated, sinking two thirds of his face into the icy pink slice. "Hey, you know what, Dave?" "No, what?" "My new front teeth are getting to be more than just edges. I can sort of bite with them now." "I've been biting with mine for months," Davey said wearily. Except for a watery crunching and slurping, there was silence; then Foster said: "But you know what, Dave?" "No, what?" "When we've got our real full-grown front teeth, we won't be able to call it the Fang Club any more, because we won't have any fangs." "What will we call it then?" "I don't know. We'll think of something."