On either side of the road were neat little villas, with trim gardens before them. As Pieter told them, these were the summer homes of the well-to-do people who live in the cities. Everybody who can, has one of these villas, where they can come during the hot weather, and they especially like to have one near Haarlem, because the beautiful gardens roundabout make the country seem so gay and bright.
"This is the one which belongs to Mynheer Van der Veer," said Wilhelmina. "I think it is the most beautiful of them all." And so it was, according to Dutch taste. The young people stopped to look at it admiringly.
For a Dutch home it was very large, because it had two stories. The entire front was painted in half a dozen different colours to represent as many different coloured stones, all arranged in a fanciful pattern.
The window-blinds were a bright pea-green, and the framework a delicate pink. The door was a dark green with a fine brass knocker in the centre, and a brass railing, shining like gold, ran down on either side of the white steps. The roof was of bright red tiles, which glistened in the sun, and what do you think was on the highest point of the gable? A china cat, coloured like life, and standing with its back up, just as though it were ready to spring upon another cat! Over the doorway was painted the motto: "Buiten Zorg," which means "Without a Care."
What really amused the party most were the queer figures which stood around in the garden.
"See that funny old fellow over by the pond, shaking his head; you might think he was alive," said Theodore. "He looks like a Turk with a big turban."
"That," said Pieter, "is an automaton, which can be wound up so as to nod his head. And look, there is another figure near him,—a funny old woman, who keeps turning around, as if she got tired of seeing the gentleman with the turban. Those ducks swimming about on the pond are made to move in the same way."
The summer villa gardens are usually filled with these queer mechanical contrivances. I suppose it amuses the rich old burghers to watch them as they sit smoking their long pipes and taking their ease in their little summer-houses on the hot days. Mynheer Van der Veer was very proud of his collection and took great care of them. When a shower came up he would put an open umbrella over each one, which made them look funnier still, and when it rained very hard, he would pick them up bodily and carry them into the house; then when the sun shone again, out would come the funny little figures too.