And thus saying they sprang forward. Their godmother stooped and kissed both on the forehead.
'Dear children,' she said, and then she turned to the two strangers, who were gazing at her with all their eyes.
'Can it be she the silly people about call a witch?' Maia was saying to herself. 'It might be, and yet I don't know. Could any one call her a witch?'
She was old—of that there was no doubt, at least so it seemed at the first glance. Her hair was perfectly white, her face was very pale. But her eyes were the most wonderful thing about her. Maia could not tell what colour they were. They seemed to change with every word she said, with every new look that came over her face. Old as she was they were very bright and beautiful, very soft and sweet too, though not the sort of eyes—Maia said afterwards to Rollo—'that I would like to look at me if I had been naughty.' Godmother was not tall; when she first came into the little kitchen she seemed to stoop a little, and did not look much bigger than Silva. And she was all covered over with a dark green cloak, almost the colour of the darkest of the foliage of the fir-trees.
'One would hardly see her if she were walking about the woods,' thought Maia, 'except that her face and hair are so white, they would gleam out like snow.'
CHAPTER V.
THE STORY OF A KING'S DAUGHTER.
'Gentle and sweet is she;
As the heart of a rose is her heart,
As soft and as fair and as sweet.'
Liliput Lectures.