The rustic, yellowed wooden door chimes like a little girl’s princess jewelry box as I gingerly push it open. I involuntarily close my eyes and bask in the quaint cottage’s air-conditioning, a soothing respite from New England’s sweltering September weather. Long slender fingers of ethereal classical music—violin strains of Beauty and the Beast—float into my ears from all corners of the Historic Deerfield Museum Gift Shop, and it feels like I have traveled three centuries back into Belle’s cottage, where all she had was love and time.

As I wander across the cobbled floor, the door rings again and she glides in, obstinate gray wisps of hair escaping a fairy godmother’s bun. Her quilted blue puffer vest fails to obscure her oversized navy and white striped shirt, and her bootcut jeans her white canvas children’s sneakers. Nonchalantly, she floats around the gift shop, wrinkled bony fingers running across cylindrical American Heritage chocolate blocks, her chipped burgundy nail tracing the teal leather-bound spine of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and her childlike hand hovering over vintage keys—“Opening Doorways to the Past: Pewter Pin or Pendant.”

She peeks into a side room, disappears for three long minutes, and reemerges from the other side, hugging three toddler-sized paper bags, each bursting with handmade knick-knacks, in a crushing embrace. Rummaging through her batik purse, she momentarily catches the cashier’s eye and grins, her crow’s feet stretching to the sides of her almond face, “This was perfect. I had such a good time.”

The cashier, a plump, radiant lady draped in layers of floral chiffon, chirps, “Well, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself!”

“That’s my pace, which is a little slow nowadays.” Picking up her bags that crackle in protest, the mysterious lady from bygone years slides toward the door in time with heart-wrenching Baroque tunes. I silently follow her out.

Time stopped when I entered and started when I left.