'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 godmother'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 passed 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 godmother 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.