back through the
archway when the door of the house flew open and a little stream of
water ran out upon the pavement. This was immediately followed by
another and much larger flow, and the next moment the water came
pouring out through the doorway in such a torrent that she had just time
to scramble up on the window-ledge before the street was completely
flooded.

[Illustration: "'DEAR ME!' SHE EXCLAIMED, 'HERE COMES ALL THE
FURNITURE!'"]

Dorothy's first idea was that there was something wrong with the pipes,
but as she peeped in curiously through the window she was astonished to
see that it was raining hard inside the house--"and dear me!" she
exclaimed, "here comes all the furniture!" and, sure enough, the next
moment a lot of old-fashioned furniture came floating out of the house
and drifted away down the street. There was a corner cupboard full of
crockery, and two spinning-wheels, and a spindle-legged table set out
with a blue-and-white tea-set and some cups and saucers, and finally a
carved sideboard which made two or three clumsy attempts to get through
the doorway broadside on, and then took a fresh start, and came through
endwise with a great flourish. All of these things made quite a little
fleet, and the effect was very imposing; but by this time the water was
quite up to the window-ledge, and as the sideboard was a
fatherly-looking piece of furniture with plenty of room to move about
in, Dorothy stepped aboard of it as it went by, and, sitting down on a
little shelf that ran along the back of it, sailed away in the wake of
the tea-table.

CHAPTER III

THE CRUISE OF THE SIDEBOARD

The sideboard behaved in the most absurd manner, spinning around and
around in the water, and banging about among the other furniture as if
it had never been at sea before, and finally bringing up against the
tea-table with a crash in the stupidest way imaginable, and knocking the
tea-set and all the cups and saucers into the water. Dorothy felt very
ridiculous as you may suppose, and, to add to her mortification, the
Stork ferryman suddenly reappeared, and she could see him running along
the roofs of the houses, and now and then stopping to stare down at her
from the eaves as she sailed by, as if she were the most extraordinary
spectacle he had ever seen, as indeed she probably was. Sometimes he
waited until the sideboard had floated some distance past him as if to
see how it looked, gazed at from behind; and then D