"Yes, yes, you may look out for a moment. There is nobody about. A quiet
garden lies beyond the hedge. From the other window you see the big open
space in front of the great house. Nothing else but the sleeping
watch-dog before the door. I hope he is always as quiet. You may look out
there too, if you like."

Dora first opened the window towards the garden; a delicious odor of
jasmine and mignonette was wafted into the room from the flower-beds
below. The high green hedge stretched away for a long distance, and beyond
it she could see green sward and flower-beds and shady bowers. How lovely
it must be over there! There was no one in sight, but some one certainly
must have been there, for by the door of the house rose a wonderful
triumphal arch, made of two tall bean-poles tied together at the top, and
thickly covered with fir-branches. A large piece of card-board hung down
from the arch, and swung back and forth in the wind, and something was
written on it in big letters.

Suddenly a noise resounded from the open space in front of the great
house. Dora ran to the other window and peeped out. A carriage stood there
and two brown horses there stamping impatiently in their traces. A crowd
of children came bursting out of the door of the house, all together; one,
two, three, four, five, six, both boys and girls. "I, I, I must get upon
the box," cried each one, and all together, louder and louder at every
word; while in the midst of the crowd, the great dog began to jump upon
first one child and then another, barking joyfully in his excitement. Such
a noise had probably not greeted Aunt Ninette's ears within the memory of
man.

"What is the matter, in heaven's name," cried she, almost beside herself.
"What sort of a place have we come to?"