and creaking out a kind of sleepy windmill song. This is the song
it seemed to sing:

Around, and around, and around, I go,
Sometimes fast and sometimes slow.
I pump the water and grind the grain,
The marshy fields of the Lowlands, drain.
I harness the wind to turn my mill,
Around, and around, and around with a will!

Perhaps it was listening to the windmill song that made Kat say,

"Why do we have windmills, father?"

Kit and Kat said "Why?" every few steps on that walk. You see,
they didn't often have their father all to themselves, to ask
questions of.

"Why, what a little Dutch girl," said Father Vedder, "not to know
what windmills are for! They pump the water out of the fields, to
be sure! Don't you know how wet the fields are sometimes? If we
didn't keep pumping the water out, they would be so wet we could
not make gardens at all."

"Does the wind pump the water?" asked Kat.

"Of course it does, goosie girl! and grinds the grain too. The
wind blows against the great arms and turns them round and round.
That works the pumps; and the pumps suck the water out of the
fields, and it is poured out into the canals. If it weren't for