they had tumbled into each other's arms in the same cradle. And Hands-pansy,
when he first saw her, did not discover that Nillywill was a real princess
hiding her birthright in the home of a poor peasant; nor did Nillywill, when
she first saw Hands, see in him the baby-beginnings of the most honest and
good heart that ever sprang out of poverty and humble parentage. So from her
end of their little crib she kicked him with her royal rosy toes, and he from
his kicked back and laughed: and thus, as you hear, at first blindness they
fell head over ears in love with one another.

Nothing could undo that; for day by day earth and sun and wind came to rub it
in deeper, and water could not wash it off. So when they had been seven years
together there could be no doubt that they felt as if they had been made for
each other in heaven. And then something very big and sad came to pass; for
one day Nillywill had to leave off being a peasant child and become a princess
once more. People very grand and grown-up came to the woodside where she
flowered so gaily, and caught her by the golden hair of her head and pulled
her up by her dear little roots, and carried her quite away from Hands-pansy
to a place she had never been in before. They put her into a large palace,
with woods and terraces and landscape gardens on all sides of it; and there
she sat crying and pale, saying that she wanted to be taken back to Hands-
pansy and grow up and marry him, though he was but the poor peasant boy he had
always been.

Those that had charge of Nillywill in her high station talked wisely, telling
her to forget him. "For," said they, "such a thing as a princess marrying a
peasant boy can only happen once in a blue moon!"

When she heard that, Nillywill began every night to watch the moon rise,
hoping some evening to see it grow up like a blue flower against the dusk and
shake down her wish to her like a bee out of its deep bosom.