The cottage was square, with low walls, and a high pyramidal roof
thatched with long reeds, of which the withered blossoms hung over all
the eaves. It is noticeable that most of the buildings I saw in Fairy
Land were cottages. There was no path to a door, nor, indeed, was there
any track worn by footsteps in the island.

The cottage rose right out of the smooth turf. It had no windows that I
could see; but there was a door in the centre of the side facing me,
up to which I went. I knocked, and the sweetest voice I had ever heard
said, "Come in." I entered. A bright fire was burning on a hearth in
the centre of the earthern floor, and the smoke found its way out at an
opening in the centre of the pyramidal roof. Over the fire hung a little
pot, and over the pot bent a woman-face, the most wonderful, I thought,
that I had ever beheld. For it was older than any countenance I had ever
looked upon. There was not a spot in which a wrinkle could lie, where a
wrinkle lay not. And the skin was ancient and brown, like old parchment.

The woman's form was tall and spare: and when she stood up to welcome
me, I saw that she was straight as an arrow. Could that voice of
sweetness have issued from those lips of age? Mild as they were, could
they be the portals whence flowed such melody? But the moment I saw
her eyes, I no longer wondered at her voice: they were absolutely
young--those of a woman of five-and-twenty, large, and of a clear gray.
Wrinkles had beset them all about; the eyelids themselves were old, and
heavy, and worn; but the eyes were very incarnations of soft light. She
held out her hand to me, and the voice of sweetness again greeted me,
with the single word, "Welcome." She set an old wooden chair for me,
near the fire, and went on with her cooking. A wondrous sense of refuge
and repose came upon me. I felt like a boy who has got home from school,
miles across the hills, through a heavy storm of wind and snow. Almost,
as I gazed on her, I sprang from my seat to kiss those old lips. And
when, having finished her cooking, she brought some of the dish she had
prepared, and set it on a little table by me, covered with a snow-white
cloth, I could not help laying my head on her bosom, and bursting
into happy tears. She put her arms round me, saying, "Poor child; poor
child!"