"Look out!" shouted Rudolf to the coachman. "Don't you see you are going to upset us?"

The coachman was a very grand-looking person in a white and gold livery. He never even turned his powdered head as he shouted back:

"Didn't have no--or-ders--not--to!" And for some time they tore on faster than ever.

At last Ann leaned forward and caught hold of one of the coachman's little gold-embroidered coat tails. "Oh, do take care," she cried, "you might run somebody down!"

"That's it,"--the coachman's voice sounded faint and jerky, and the children could hardly catch the words that floated back to them: "Running--down--run-ing--down! As--fast--as--ev-er--I--can.

Most--com-pli-cated--insides--in--all--the--king-dom. Can't--be --wound--up--not--by--likes--of--you--"

The horses were no longer galloping, now they were slowing up, now they stopped, but with such a sudden jerk that all three children were tumbled out into the road. They had been expecting this to happen for so long that the thing was not such a shock after all, and somehow they landed without being hurt in the slightest. They picked themselves up, and saw the little carriage standing at the side of the road, the horses perfectly motionless, each with a forefoot raised in the air, the coachman stiff and still upon his box, _gazing_ straight in front of him.

"He'll stay like that," said Peter mournfully, rubbing the dust from his knees, "till he's wound up again. I wish we had the key!"

"I wish we did," said Rudolf crossly. "You know what Betsy says about--'If wishes were horses, beggars could ride'--well, they aren't, so we've got to walk now. I wonder where we are?"

Looking around them, the children saw that they had come to the very last of the many colored fields, where the brown road ended in a stretch of creamy-yellow gra.s.s. Just beyond a thick woods began, but was divided from the creamy field by a broad bright strip of color, like a long flower bed planted with flowers of all kinds and colors set in all sorts of different patterns--stars, triangles, diamonds, and squares.

"That's the border," shouted Ann, "and over there somewhere we'll find the person the Queen said would help us get back to Aunt Jane. Come on!" As she spoke she bounded off across the field, the two boys after her, and in less time than it takes to tell it they had run through the tall yellow gra.s.s, jumped the border, and stood upon the edge of the wood.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 with pink pasteboard ears, a Jolly Santa Claus, a smoking hot Dinner, a Nice Nurse who rocked a smiling baby, a brown-faced grinning Organ-Man, his organ strapped before him, his Monkey on his shoulder.

There were too many by far for the children to take in all at once, but at the sight of one particular member of the crowd, the children gasped with astonishment; and Peter's excitement nearly betrayed them. There, lounging by the side of a mild-faced School-Mistress Person, still smoking his chocolate cigarette, was--the False Hare!

"Look alive now!" the little man was crying out. "Who's next, who's next?"

"Me, me, me--take me next, Sandy!" A dozen little voices cried this at one and the same time. There was a scramble, bursts of laughter, followed by a sharp rebuke from Sandy. "No, you don't either. Stand back, you small fry. No shoving!"

When Peter had seen and recognized the False Hare he had been so excited that it had been almost impossible for Rudolf and Ann to keep him quiet. Now, as he watched the scramble and the rush and the fuss the funny crowd was making about the little man, he laughed out so loud that it was too late even to pinch him. The children's presence was discovered, and two, tall, silver candlesticks jumped from a satin-lined box and ran to draw them into the middle of the glade.

Sandy, as the little man appeared to be called, paused in his business, turned round, and smiled at the children.

"Now then," said he, "what are you doing here? Don't you know this is my busy night? Who are you, anyway? Not on my list, I'll warrant.

Who's dreams are you?"

"n.o.body's," began Rudolf. "The Corn-cob Queen sent us to see if you could tell us any way to get back to our Aunt Jane--"

"n.o.body's?" interrupted the little man. "Did you say you were n.o.body's dreams? Don't see him in the N's." And he took a printed list out of his pocket and ran his eye anxiously over it. "Are you sure--"

"Please, he means we're not dreams," said Ann, stepping forward, "at least we don't think so." She hesitated a second and then added: "It depends on what happens to them. Are these all dreams?"

"All perfectly Good Dreams, or my name's not Sandman," answered the baggy fellow briskly. "We don't handle the Bad Ones here, not us!"

Peter looked interested. "Where does the Bad Ones live?" he asked. "I wants to see them."

The Sandman shook his head at Peter. "Oh, no, you don't, little boy,"

he said. "No, you don't! Don't you go meddling in their direction or you'll get into trouble, take my word for it. They live way off in the woods and they're a bad lot. They've got a worse boss than old Sandy!

No, no;--the good kind are trouble enough for me. What with the hurry and the flurry and the general mix-up, something a little off color will slip in now and then. Everybody makes mistakes _sometimes_!"

As he made this last remark Sandy cast a doubtful look at the False Hare, who grinned and tipped his silk hat to him.

"I told Sandy _all_ about myself," said the False Hare, winking at the children. "I told him I was just as good as I could be!"

The children could not help laughing. "I'm afraid you don't know him as well as we do, Mr. Sandy," said Ann.

"Oh, I know about as much as I want to know about him," said Sandy, pretending to frown very fiercely. "I've almost made up my mind to get rid of him, but the truth is I don't really know just where he belongs."

"Doesn't matter to _me_ whether I spend the night with a bald-headed old gentleman or a bird-dog--all the same to _me_," said the False Hare meekly. This speech sounded so like him that the children looked at one another and burst out laughing again, at which the False Hare gave a kind of solemn wink, sighed, and touched his eyes with a little paper handkerchief he held gracefully in one paw.

The Sandman turned his back on the silly fellow, and went on with his explanations to the children: "We have a very select set of customers," he said, "and it's our aim to supply 'em with the finest line of goods on the market. Wears me to a frazzle sometimes, this business does," he stopped to wipe from his brow a tiny stream of sand that was trickling down it, "but I've got to keep at it! All the folks, big and little, like Good Dreams, and want 'em every night, and if they get mixed up or the quality's inferior, or there's not enough to go around, I tell you what, it makes trouble for Sandy! But just step a little nearer, and you shall see for yourselves how the whole thing is managed."

The children followed Sandy, who walked back to the pile of empty sacks, picked one up, compared the label on it with a name on his list, and called out in a loud voice: "Mrs. Patrick O'Flynn, Wash Lady--excellent character--never misses on a Monday--six children--husband not altogether satisfactory. Here, now, Noddy--Blink! I'll want some help, boys."

As he called out these two names, two very fat, sleepy boys, looking like pillows with strings tied round their waists, slouched from behind the rock where they had been waiting, and stood sulkily at attention. There was a scramble and a rush and a fuss among the Good Dreams, just as there had been before when the children first peeped into the glade, each one struggling and pushing and crowding to get ahead of the next, without any regard as to whether or not it was wanted. It took a tremendous effort on the part of Sandy, together with all the help the sleepy sulky boys would give, to get the right collection of dreams into the Wash Lady's sack, and to keep the wrong ones out.

"Letter from the Old Country," Sandy cried. "That's it, boys, more lively there. Tell that Pound of Tea to step up--No, no pink silk stockings to-day, thank you. Tell that Landlord the rent's paid, I'll let him know when he's wanted. Hand over that pile of mended clothing--and the pay envelope, mind it's the right amount--all the rest of you, step aside!" Waving away a gay bonnet with a bird on it, a bottle marked "Patent Medicine," and the persistent pink stockings, the Sandman closed the mouth of Mrs. O'Flynn's sack, and swung it on his shoulder, nodding to the children to watch what would happen.

Much excited, they crowded round the open door in the side of the big rock and peered down into what seemed to be a kind of dark well with a toboggan-slide descending into it. Sandy placed the Wash Lady's sack at the top of the slide, and before the children could so much as wink, it had slid off into the darkness and disappeared from sight.

"Oh, my!" cried Ann, "Is it a shoot-the-chutes? Does it b.u.mp when it gets there?"

"No, no," said the Sandman. "No b.u.mps whatsoever, the most comfortable kind of traveling I know, in fact you're there the same time you start, and I'd like to know how you can beat that? I ought to know, for I use this route myself on my rounds a little earlier in the evening." He walked back to his pile of sacks, and picked up another of them. "Now then," said he, examining the label, "who's next?