And then she took Maia up on her knee and gave her such a sweet kiss that the child could not grumble.
'You are _very_ funny, godmother,' she repeated.
'Maia,' he exclaimed, 'I am afraid we are forgetting about going home and meeting Nanni and everything. It must be getting very late. It is so queer,' he added with a sigh, glancing round the dear little kitchen, 'I seemed to have forgotten that _this_ isn't our home, and yet we have only been here an hour or two, and----'
'Yes,' said Maia, 'I feel just the same. Indeed Auréole and her pets seem far more real to me now than Lady Venelda and the white castle.'
'And the old doctor and all the lessons you have to do,' said godmother; and somehow the children no longer felt surprised at her knowing all about everything. 'But you are right, my boy, good boy,' she went on, turning to Rollo. 'There is a time for all things, and now it is time to go back to your other life. Say good-bye to each other, my children,' and when they had done so--very reluctantly, you may be sure--she took Rollo by one hand and Maia by the other, Waldo and Silva standing at the cottage-door to see them off, and led them across the little clearing, away into the now darkening alleys of the wood.
'Are you going with us to where Nanni is?' asked Maia.
'Not to where you left her. I will take you by a short cut,' said godmother, who, since they had left the cottage, had seemed to grow into just an ordinary-looking old peasant woman, very bent and small, for any one at least who did not peep far enough inside her queer hood to see her wonderful eyes and gleaming hair, and whom no one would have suspected of the marvellous crimson dress under the long dark cloak. Maia kept peeping up at her with a strange look in her face.
'I don't quite know,' Maia replied. 'I'm not quite sure, godmother, if I'm not a little--a very little--frightened of you. You change so. In the cottage you seemed a sort of a young fairy godmother--and now----' she hesitated.
'Well, listen now. I'll tell you the real truth, strange as it may seem. I am _very_ old--older than you can even fancy, and yet I am and I always shall be young.'
'In fairyland--in the other country, do you mean?' asked Rollo.