[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI

THE GOOD DREAMS

A thin screen of bushes was all that hid from the children’s eyes the people whose voices they could hear so plainly.

“Maybe it’s some kind of picnic they’re having in there,” cried Peter, pushing eagerly forward.  “Come on quick!”

“No, you don’t, either,” whispered Rudolf, catching him and holding him back.  “Don’t let’s get caught this time, let’s peep through first and see what the people are like.”

“Yes, do let’s be careful,” pleaded Ann.  “We don’t want to get arrested again, it’s not a bit nice—­though I suppose if this is where the Queen’s friend lives, it isn’t likely anything so horrid will happen to us.”

“Do stop talking, Ann, and listen.  Whoever they are in there, they are making so much noise they can’t possibly hear me, so I’m going to creep into those bushes and see what I can see.”

As he spoke Rudolf carefully parted the bushes at a spot where they were thin and peeped between the leaves, Ann and Peter crowding each other to see over his shoulder.  They looked into a kind of open glade not much larger than a good-sized room and walled on all sides by tall trees and thick underbrush.  It had a flooring of soft green turf, and about in the middle lay a great rock as large as a playhouse.  This rock was all covered over with moss and lichens, and the strange thing about it was that a neat door had been cut in its side.  Before this door, talking and waving his hands to the crowd that thronged about him, stood a man—­the queerest little man the children had ever seen!  He looked like a collection of stout sacks stuffed very tightly and tied firmly at the necks.  One sack made his head, another larger one his body, four more his arms and legs.  His broad face, though rather dull, wore a good-humored expression, and he smiled as he looked about him.

A pile of empty sacking-bags lay on the ground beside him, and from time to time he caught up one of these, ran his eye over the crowd, chose one of them, and popped him, or it, as it happened to be, into the sack which he then swung on his shoulder and heaved into the open doorway in the big rock, where it disappeared from sight.  He would then taken another sack and make a fresh selection, looking about him all the while with sleepy good humor, and paying little if any attention to the cries, questions, and complaints with which he was attacked on all sides.

What a funny lot they were—­this crowd that surrounded the little man!  The children could hardly smother their excitement at the sight of them.  Not people or animals only were they, but all kinds of odd objects also, such as no one could expect to see running about loose.  A Birthday Cake was there, with lighted candles; a little pile of neatly darned socks and stockings, a white-cotton Easter Rabbit