They were loth to leave the queer-looking, peculiar people even to see their more peculiar houses, but finally started to walk down the principal residence street. They saw children dressed in the funniest clothes that mortal mind ever thought of or designed. Some had rubber suits so that if it rained or they fell in the water they would not get wet. Others were dressed in silk, satin and laces or Little Lord Fauntleroy styles. Still others were bare-footed with only a calico slip for a dress. Some of the mothers had their hair done up high on the head or in a mass of curls and puffs, others wore it parted in the middle and brushed so smoothly that a fly alighting upon it would slip and break its neck. But the houses! How queer and quaint they were built after original designs of the owners. One, for instance, a yellow frame with white trimmings had one large long room on the ground floor with a high square tower on one corner, four stories high, with steps from the outside. This we called the Light-House. “Well, of all homely houses this is the homeliest!” said Harold. “I wonder what they do in rainy weather with the steps on the outside!” The man who lived next door evidently believed the only way to build a house was to have all the rooms on the ground floor so as to do away with climbing stairs. The next man had few windows and small ones at that, seeming to like a cool, dark house; while his next door neighbor delighted in light and windows and had so many that his house was called the glass house; and so on, and so on. One liked one thing, another liked its opposite and each built as he pleased. The grounds surrounding these houses were quite as characteristic of different tastes as the houses. Some yards were laid out in set flower-beds, others with the flowers running wild and untrained while still others had not a flower or shrub to break the even roll of the grass-sown lawn. Some of the people had their meals served three times a day, some four times, and some only twice. Some went to bed with the chickens and got up with the Sun while others went to bed at Sunrise, after a night of merry-making or dancing. Some believed in study, others in passing the time as best one can only looking out for the fun of the moment; while still others thought only of the future; and, as there are no Mrs. Grundys, each one did as he pleased and no unpleasant or unkind remarks were made. All the inhabitants attend strictly to their own business and let others do the same. “After all, then, these queer people living in their quaint houses have one custom which it would be well for our Earth people to emulate,” said the Prince, in which all the rest of the party laughingly acquiesced. CHAPTER XIII.