learned that she must wed with one of her own rank who was a stranger to her
save for his name and his renown as the lord of a neighbouring country; there
was no help for her, since she was a princess, but she must wed according to
the claims of her station. When she heard of it, she went at nightfall to her
pansies, all lying in their beds, and told them of her grief. They, awakened
by her tears, lifted up their grave eyes and looked at her.

"Do you not hear?" said they.

"Hear what?" asked the Princess.

"We are low in the ground: we hear!" said the pansies. "Stoop down your head
and listen!"

The Princess let her head go to the ground; and "click, click," she heard
wooden shoes coming along the road. She ran to the gate, and there was Hands,
tall and lean, dressed as a poor peasant, with a bundle tied up in a blue
cotton handkerchief across his shoulder, and five thousand miles trodden to
nothing by the faithful tramping of his old wooden shoes.

"Oh, the blue moon, the blue moon!" cried the Princess; and running down the
road, she threw herself into his arms.

How happy and proud they were of each other! He, because she remembered him
and knew him so well by the sight of his face and the sound of his feet after
all these years; and she, because he had come all that way in a pair of wooden
shoes, just as he was, and had not been afraid that she would be ashamed to
know him again.

"I am so hungry!" said Hands, when he and Nillywill had done kissing each