When a man walked into Avalon Antiques Mall Saturday afternoon to ask if dogs could come in, manager Sparky Embleton said, "Of course, look at the dog hair on the rug. Dogs are welcome here."

A few minutes later, three women came in, followed by the man with a small dog on a leash. She immediately started making a fuss over the little dog, whose name, she later learned, was Sammy.

A few minutes later, one of the two women, who had "striking red hair," asked her to open one of the glass display cases to see some items. As she was taking them out, she looked up to see Barbra Streisand standing beside her.

"I knew immediately who she was," Embleton said. "My face got all flushed - but I didn't say anything. I wanted to be professional and give her some space."

The famous singer stayed in the store with "her entourage," for about 45 minutes Embleton said. The mall is a three-story building that opened in June of 2002 in which nearly 100 antique dealers have booths displaying rare books and paper, primitive furniture, oak and mahogany furniture, glass and china, silver, prints and artwork.

"She was very polite, very sweet. She asked me a lot of questions about what I knew about certain items. She bought some marvelous intricately crocheted coasters encased in glass and trimmed in brass. She asked me what the best price was, and I told her I could give her 10 percent off with cash, check or debit card. She also bought two prints at the half-price booth."

She offered the singer's dog a dog bone, but Barbra said, "He won't eat that, he eats people food." The half dozen or so other customers in the store quickly heard through whispered conversations that Streisand was in the shop, but all of them kept their distance and respected her privacy, Embleton said.

She said Streisand took some pictures of some of the items in the store with "a great camera that had pink rhinestones and a big `B' on it.

Before they left, the women were asking her where they could get an ice cream or frozen yogurt. Embleton said she drew a blank, forgetting about Gifford's Ice Cream, which is sold on the Creamery Platform. As they walked toward the door, Embleton said, "Thank you for coming. I've been a fan of yours for a long time."

"Thank you," Streisand said, adding, "What kind of a Louis did you get?" The question referred to a conversation that Streisand had apparently overheard, when Embleton told a co-worker she had just gotten a Louis Vitton bag.

Streisand visited at least two other shops while she was in town - thanks to antique dealer Richard French who had seen her earlier in the day at an antiques show in Portland. French said he had noticed her at the show, and at one point overheard her say, "Well now we're off to XXXX (another town in Maine famous for antiques, which French did not want to name, for fear of offending his fellow antique dealers in that town).

"I said to her, `You really ought to go to Wiscasset,' and I gave her my card," French said. "But I never dreamed she would come."

He went back to his antique shop, French and Van Dyke at 8 Federal Street, and a few hours later she walked through the door.

"She didn't buy anything, but she took some pictures," French said. "I gave her our brochure with the names and addresses of all our antique dealers in Wiscasset."

She also visited Lilac Cottage, according to John Matsky.

"She was absolutely beautiful," Matsky said. "And she was so cool, so collected."

Matsky said she is building a reproduction of an eighteenth century home in California, and is on a buying trip to furnish the home.

"She collects eighteenth century furniture in a big way," Matsky said. "She told me she had just sold her apartment in New York."