What do you think of a garden gate without any fence? But this is just the sort of a gate that the twins entered when they arrived home. Instead of a fence there was a small canal which divided the garden from the road, and of course the gate was in the middle of a small bridge, otherwise how could they have got across the canal? At the front door they both left their shoes on the steps outside, for Dutch people never think of bringing their dirty shoes into the house. Then they opened only half of the front door and went in. Many Dutch doors are made in two parts, the upper half remaining open most of the time, like a window, while the lower half is closed like an ordinary door. "Oh, mamma, see what a lot of 'suikers' the bride threw to us," said Wilhelmina, running up to Mevrouw Joost, who was bustling about the china cupboard in the living-room. "And she was such a pretty bride, too, with a lovely dress; and there were flowers twined all about the carriage, and a wreath on the horse's head, and long streamers of white ribbon wound around the whip," she continued breathlessly. "And we got more 'suikers' than any one else," put in Pieter. "Yes, it was a gay party. I saw them pass by the house," said Mevrouw Joost, smilingly, as she ate a "suiker." "Baby Jan must have one too," said Wilhelmina, as she went over to play with the baby who was kicking and crowing in his great carved cradle near the window. Jan was the household pet, and there had been a great celebration when he was a week old. All the friends of the Joost family were invited to come and see the baby, a red pincushion having been hung out beside the front door to let everybody know that there was a new baby boy within. When the guests arrived, they were given rusks to eat, a kind of sweet bread, covered with aniseed and sugar, called "muisjes," which really means "mice." Before, when the friends had come to pay their respects to Wilhelmina and Pieter, there had been two kinds of "muisjes." One had a sort of smooth white icing on the top, and that was Wilhelmina's, while Pieter's rusks had lumps of sugar sticking up all over them. The Dutch are the neatest people in the world. They are always washing and rubbing and dusting things, and one could no more find a spider's web in Mevrouw Joost's home than they could a white elephant. The floor of the living-room was made of tiny red bricks, waxed and polished until they shone like glass. There was much heavy oak furniture, beautifully carved; a big round table stood in the centre, and on one side was a great dresser or sideboard. The chairs were solid and big, with high backs and straw seats, and some of them were painted dark green, with curious little pictures and decorations also painted on them.