Looking up, she used to wonder what went on there. She and Hands had stolen into the woods, when children together, and watched the small earth-fairies at play, and had seen them, when the moon was full, lift up their arms to it, making, perhaps, signals of greeting to far-off moon-brothers. So she thought to herself, “What kind are the fairies up there, and who is the greatest moon-fairy of all who makes the blue moon rise and bring good-will to the sad wishers of the human race? Is it,” thought Nillywill, “the moon-fairy who then opens its heart and brings down healing therefrom to lovers upon earth?”
And now, as happens to all those who are captives of a crown, Nillywill 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 other. And when Nillywill heard that, she brought him into the palace through the pansies by her own private way; then with her own hands she set food before him, and made him eat. Hands, looking at her, said, “You are quite as beautiful as I thought you would be!”
“And you—so are you!” she answered, laughing and clapping her hands. And “Oh, the blue moon,” she cried—“surely the blue moon must rise to-night!”