top on board and finish the chapter," said Nell.

"You'll repent it if you do," I ventured. Yet I think she would have
stayed if her stepsister had not urged.

We walked along an ordinary village street for some distance; it was
dusty and unbeautiful. Even Miss Rivers had begun to look doubtful, when
suddenly we came in sight of a toy fairyland--a Dutch fairyland, yet a
place to excite the wonder even of a Dutchman used to living half in,
half out of water.

From where the party stopped, arrested by the curious vision, stretched
away, as far as eyes could follow, an earthern dyke, bordered on either
hand by a lily-fringed toy canal, just wide enough for a toy rowboat to
pass. Beyond the twin, toy canals--again on either hand--was set a row
of toy houses, each standing in a little square of radiant garden, which
was repeated upside down in the sky-blue water, not only of the twin
canals, but of the still more tiny, subsidiary canals which flowed round
the flowery squares, cutting each off from its fellow.

Tibe, delighted with Aalsmeer and a dog he saw in the distance, darted
along the straight, level stretch of dyke, which every now and then
heaved itself up into a camel-backed bridge, under which toy boats could
pass from the right-hand water-street to the left-hand water-street. We
followed, but on the first bridge Nell stopped impulsively.

"Do you know we've _all_ been in this place before? It's
_Willow-pattern-land_. _Don't_ you recognize it?"

"Of course," the Mariner assured her. "You and I used to play here
together when we were children. You remember that blue boat of ours? And
see, there's our house--the pink one, with the green-and-white-lozenge
shutters, and the thicket of hydrangeas reflected in the water. Isn't it
good to come back to our own?"

Thus he snatched her from me, just as my surprise was succeeding, and
made a place for himself with her, in my toy fairyland.

"It's true! One does feel like one of the little blue people that live
in a willow-pattern plate," said Phyllis, as Nell and Starr sauntered on
ahead. "It's perfectly Chinese here, but so cozy; I believe you had the
place made a few minutes ago, to please us, and as soon as we turn our
backs it will disappear. It _can't_ be real."

"Those men think it's real," said I. There were several, rowing along
the canals in brightly painted boats, with brass milk cans, and
knife-grinding apparatus, calmly unaware that they or their surroundi