of centuries.

But then, I was in the motor-car: and though Robert, in a different and
more sketchy costume, would have been a gallant Batavian warrior, there
would be a certain indecorousness in permitting my fancy to make the
necessary changes. I had to content myself, therefore, with things as
they were; with the teuf-teuf of the automobile instead of the wild
wailing of white-robed Druids, and with the coming and going of modern
carriages under the shadowy branches, instead of strange chariots of
bygone kings.

After all, we did not find fairy-land but merely villa-land, when we
flashed out from the mysterious heart of the forest; but the villas were
charming, scattered in the woods, ringed with flowery lawns, and not one
without a huge veranda like a garden-room, fitted up with so many
cushioned sofas, easy-chairs, and little tables, that it was clear the
family life was lived there.

"I do hope my Dutch cousin's house at Scheveningen is as pretty as
these," I said to myself. "It would be delicious to visit in a
garden-room"; but presently we slipped out of the shade into sunlight,
and were in a town of brick streets, huge hotels, with flags all
a-flutter in a spanking, salt-smelling breeze, gay little shops and
houses such as grow up by the sea. It was Scheveningen.

I blinked in the blaze of sunlight which tore open the green veil of
dusk, and the air, though tingling with ozone, felt hot after the depths
of the forest.

Not a flower, not a garden was to be seen, yet Scheveningen was a
flower-garden of color in itself. Where the color came from you could
scarcely say, yet it struck at your eyes from all directions. Flags
flamed, roofs were red as beds of geraniums; or else they were green, or
else they were vivid yellow. The hotels were of quaint design, with a
suggestion of the Oriental; the shops had covered galleries, and the
people moving in the big, circular _place_ into which we drove--the
_place_ of the Kurhaus and of the circus--were drifting particles of the
bright mosaic; tall, dark young officers (not at all typically Dutch
according to preconceived ideas) in green and crimson or bright blue
uniforms; pretty girls in white with rose-trimmed or scarlet hats;
nursemaids in the costume of some remote province, the sunlight setting
their gold head-ornaments on fire; tiny children in blue sailor-suits,
or with a little red fez on a yellow head; old, white-haired gentlemen
holding on unsuitable top-hat