No sooner had they turned the corner ahead of them than they found themselves in broad daylight.  The passage was now so wide that all three could walk abreast, holding hands; a moment more and they stood at the mouth of the long white cave or tunnel they had been walking through.  There was open country beyond them, and just opposite to where the children stood was the queerest little house that they had ever seen.  It was long and very low, hardly more than one story high, and was painted blue and white in stripes running lengthwise.  In the middle was a little front door with a window on either side of it and three square blue and white striped steps leading up to it.  From the chimney a trail of thick white smoke poured out.  As the three children stood staring at the house, Peter cried out:  “It’s snowing!”

Sure enough the air was full of thick white flakes.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” Ann wailed, “what shall we do now?  We can’t go back in the cave because the Warming-pan might catch us, and if we stay here Peter will catch his death of cold out in the snow in his night drawers—­and so will we all.  Oh, what would mother say!”

“But we are not out in the snow, Ann,” began Rudolf in his arguing voice.  “We are in in the snow.”

“And it is not wet,” added Peter who was trying to roll a snowball out of the white flakes that were piling themselves on the ground with amazing quickness.

“I don’t care,” said Ann.  “I know mother wouldn’t like us to be in in it or out in it.  I’m going to knock at the door of that house this minute and ask if they won’t let us stay there till the storm’s over.”

“All right,” said Rudolf, “only I hope the people who live there don’t happen to be any relation of the Warming-pan.”

It was a dreadful thought.  The three children looked at the house and hesitated.  Then Rudolf laughed, drew his precious sword, which he had fastened into the belt of his pajamas, and mounted the steps, the others following behind him.

“You be all ready to run,” he whispered, “if you don’t like the looks of the person who comes.  Now!” And he knocked long and loud upon the blue and white striped door.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III

A VISIT TO THE GOOSE

The door flew open almost before Rudolf had stopped knocking, but there was nothing very alarming about the person who stood on the threshold.  Ann said afterward she had thought at first it was a Miss Spriggins who came sometimes to sew for her mother, but it was not; it was only a very large gray goose neatly dressed in blue and white bed-ticking, with a large white apron tied round her waist and wearing big spectacles with black rims to them.

“Nothing to-day, thank you,” said the Goose.

“But please—­” began Rudolf.

“No soap, no baking powder, no lightning rods, no hearth-brooms, no cake tins, no life insurance—­” rattled the Goose so rapidly that the children could hardly understand her—­“nothing at all to-day, thank you!”