Maia grew rather pale. Now that they were actually on the spot, she began to feel afraid, though of what she scarcely knew. Nanni's queer hints came back to her mind, and she caught hold of Rollo's arm, trembling.
'Oh, Rollo,' she exclaimed, 'suppose it's true? About the witch, I mean—or suppose they have found out about the milk and are very angry?'
'Well, we can't help it if they are,' replied Rollo sturdily. 'We've done the best thing we could in coming back to pay for it. You've got the little purse, Maia?'
'Oh, yes, it's safe in my pocket,' she said. 'But——'
She stopped, for just at that moment the door of the cottage opened and a figure came forward. It was no 'old witch,' no ogre or goblin, but a young girl—a little older than Maia she seemed—who stood there with a sweet, though rather grave expression on her face and in her soft dark eyes, as she said gently, 'Welcome—we have been expecting you.'
'Expecting us?' exclaimed Maia, who generally found her voice more quickly than Rollo; 'how can you have been expecting us?'
She had stepped forward a step or two before her brother, and now stood looking up in the girl's face with wonder in her bright blue eyes, while she tossed back the long fair curls that fell round her head. Boys are not very observant, but Rollo could not help noticing the pretty picture the two made. The peasant maiden with her dark plaits and brown complexion, dressed in a short red skirt, and little loose white bodice fastened round the waist with a leather belt, and Maia with a rather primly-cut frock and frilled tippet of flowered chintz, such as children then often wore, and large flapping shady hat.
'How can you have been expecting us?' Maia repeated.
Rollo came forward in great curiosity to hear the answer.
The girl smiled.