"Have you noticed," Nell asked me softly, "that you never hear sounds in dreams? No matter how exciting things are, there's never any noise; everything seems to be acted in pantomime. Well, it's like that here. We're dreaming Broek-in-Waterland as we have other places."
"And dreaming each other, too?"
"I shouldn't wonder."
"Then I hope nothing will happen to wake me up."
Just then we arrived at a dream curiosity-shop which gave her an excuse not to answer.
On the edge of the town it stands, one of the first among the little old houses, which look as if they had been made to accommodate well-to-do dolls of a century or two ago. Modestly retired in a doll's garden, with an imitation stalactite grotto, and groups of miniature statues among box-tree animals, its door is always open to welcome visitors and allure them. Within, vague splashes of color against a dim background; blues that mean old Delft; yellow that means ancient brass; and all gleaming in the dusk with the strange values that flowers gain in twilight.
I knew that Nell and Phyllis and the Chaperon would not pass by, and they didn't.
There was a man inside, but he did not ask us to buy anything. He had the air of a host, pleased to show his treasures, and the Chaperon feared that I was playing some joke when I encouraged them to invade the quaint and pretty rooms.
"I don't believe it is a shop," said she. "It's just an eccentric little house, that belongs to somebody who's away—a dear old maiden lady, perhaps, a collector of antiques, for her own pleasure. This man's her caretaker."
"She's strayed into some other dream, maybe," suggested Nell. "She's lost her way, poor old dear, and can never find it again, to come back, so that's why the things are for sale—if they really are. But listen, all the clocks in the house are talking to each other about her. They expect her to come, and that's why they keep on ticking, through the years, to make the time seem short in passing; for some of them must have had their hundredth birthday, long, long ago."