Christmas Tree Land Part 12

G.o.dmother smiled. 'Perhaps,' she said. But when Maia went on questioning, she would not say any more. 'Keep something to puzzle about,' she said. 'Remember that that is half the pleasure.'

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, G.o.dmother,' she repeated.

Suddenly Rollo started.

'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 Aureole 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 G.o.dmother; 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 G.o.dmother, 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.

'What is it, my child?' said G.o.dmother.

'I don't quite know,' Maia replied. 'I'm not quite sure, G.o.dmother, 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 G.o.dmother--and now----'

she hesitated.

'And now do I seem very old?'

'_Rather_,' said Maia.

'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.

G.o.dmother turned her bright eyes full upon him. 'Not only there, my boy,' she said. 'Here, too--everywhere--I am both old and young.'

Maia gave a little sigh.

'You are very nice, G.o.dmother,' she said, 'but you are _very_ puzzling.'

But she had no time to say more, for just then G.o.dmother stopped.

'See, children,' she said, pointing down a little path among the trees, 'I have brought you a short cut, as I said I would. At the end of that alley you will find your faithful Nanni. And that will not be the end of the short cut. Twenty paces straight on in the same direction you will come out of the wood. Cross the little bridge across the brook and you will only have to climb a tiny hill to find yourselves at the back entrance of the castle. All will be right--and now good-bye, my dears, till your next holiday. Have you your flowers?'

'Oh, yes,' exclaimed both, holding up the pretty bunches as they spoke; 'but how are we to----'

'Don't trouble about how you are to see me again,' she interrupted, smiling. 'It will come--you will see,' and then before they had time to wonder any more, she turned from them, waving her hand in farewell, and disappeared.

'Rollo,' said Maia, rubbing her eyes as if she had just awakened, 'Rollo, is it all _real_? Don't you feel as if you had been dreaming?'

'No,' said Rollo. 'I feel as if _it_'--and he nodded his head backwards in the direction of the cottage--'were all real, and the castle and our cousin and Nanni and all _not_ real. You said so too.'

'Yes,' said Maia meditatively, 'while I was there with them, I felt like that. But now I don't. It seems not real, and I don't want to begin to forget them.'

'Suppose you scent your flowers,' said Rollo; 'perhaps that's why G.o.dmother gave them to us.'

Maia thought it a good idea.

'Yes,' she said, poking her little nose as far as it would go in among the fragrant blossoms, 'yes, Rollo, it comes back to me when I scent the flowers. I think it is because G.o.dmother's red dress was scented the same way. Oh, yes!' shutting her eyes, 'I can _feel_ her soft dress now, and I can hear her voice, and I can see Waldo and Silva and the dear little kitchen. How glad I am you thought of the flowers, Rollo!'

'But we must run on,' said Rollo, and so they did. But they had not run many steps before the substantial figure of Nanni appeared; she was looking very comfortable and contented.

'You have not stayed very long, Master Rollo and Miss Maia,' she said, 'but I suppose it is getting time to be turning home.'

'And have you spent a pleasant afternoon, Nanni?' asked Rollo quietly.

'How many stockings have you knitted?'

'How many!' repeated Nanni; 'come, Master Rollo, you're joking. You've not been gone more than an hour at the most, but it is queer--it must be the smell of the fir-trees--as soon as ever I sit down in this wood, off I go to sleep! I hadn't done more than two rounds when my head began nodding, so I had to put my knitting away for fear of running the needles into my eyes. And I had such pleasant dreams.'

'About the beautiful lady again?' asked Maia.

'I think so, but I can't be sure,' said Nanni. 'It was about all sorts of pretty things mixed up together. Flowers and birds, and I don't know what. And the flowers smelt, for all the world, just like the roses round the windows of my mother's little cottage at home. I could have believed I was there.'

Rollo and Maia looked at each other. It was all G.o.dmother's doing, they felt sure. How clever of her to know just what Nanni would like to dream of.

By this time they were out of the wood. The light was brighter than among the trees, but still it was easy to see that more than Nanni's 'hour' must have pa.s.sed since they left her.

'Dear me,' she exclaimed, growing rather frightened, 'it looks later than I thought! And we've a long way to go yet,' she went on, looking round; 'indeed,' and her rosy face grew pale, 'I don't seem to know exactly where we are. We must have come another way out of the wood--oh, dear, dear----'

'Don't get into such a fright, Nanni,' said Rollo; 'follow me.'

He sprang up the hilly path that G.o.dmother had told them of, Maia and Nanni following. It turned and twisted about a little, but when they got to the top, there, close before them, gleamed the white walls of the castle, and a few steps more brought them to a back entrance to the terrace by which they often came out and in.

'Well, to be sure!' exclaimed Nanni, 'you are a clever boy, Master Rollo. Who ever would have guessed there was such a short cut, and indeed I can't make it out at all which way we've come back. But so long as we're here all in good time, and no fear of a scolding, I'm sure I'm only too pleased, however we've got here.'

As they were pa.s.sing along the terrace the old doctor met them.

'Have you had a pleasant holiday?' he asked.

'Oh, _very_,' answered both Rollo and Maia, looking up in his face, where, as they expected, they saw the half-mysterious, half-playful expression they had learnt to know, and which seemed to tell that their old friend understood much more than he chose to say.

'Did you find any pretty flowers?' he asked, with a smile, 'though it is rather early in the year yet--especially for scented ones--is it not?'

'But we _have_ got some,' said Maia quickly, and glancing round to see if Nanni were still by them. She had gone on, so Maia drew out her bunch, and held them up. '_Aren't_ they sweet?' she said.

The old man pressed them to his face almost as lovingly as Maia herself.

'Ah, how _very_ sweet!' he murmured. 'How much they bring back! Cherish them, my child. You know how?'

'Yes, _she_ told us,' said Maia. 'You know whom I mean, don't you, Mr.

Doctor?'