Dame Brinker answered him with a look.

Oh, that case with the terrible instruments! The assistant lifted them. Gretel, who had been peering with brimming eyes through the crack of the closet door, could remain silent no longer.

She rushed frantically across the apartment, seized her hood, and ran from the cottage.

It was recess hour. At the first stroke of the schoolhouse bell, the canal seemed to give a tremendous shout and grow suddenly alive with boys and girls.

Dozens of gaily clad children were skating in and out among each other, and all their pent-up merriment of the morning was relieving itself in song and shout and laughter. There was nothing to check the flow of frolic. Not a thought of schoolbooks came out with them into the sunshine. Latin, arithmetic, grammar--all were locked up for an hour in the dingy schoolroom. The teacher might be a noun if he wished, and a proper one at that, but THEY meant to enjoy themselves. As long as the skating was as perfect as this, it made no difference whether Holland were on the North Pole or the equator; and, as for philosophy, how could they bother themselves with inertia and gravitation and such things when it was as much as they could do to keep from getting knocked over in the commotion.

In the height of the fun, one of the children called out, "What is that?"

"What? Where?" cried a dozen voices.

"Why, don't you see? That dark thing over there by the idiot's cottage."