Lives in the house with a green-eyed cat!
Peter, Peter, we jump for joy,
Throwing stones at the witch’s boy!”
And then sometimes they would throw them, but not when Janet was by, for she would catch them and shake them.
“You are the green-eyed cat!” they would shout, as they saw her angry face. But they took care to run as they said it.
In spite of their troubles, the brother and sister were not always unhappy, for there were many things they liked. One was the crooked old cherry-tree that grew between their cottage and the pool, and when the leaves turned fiery rose-colour in the autumn Peter would pick them up as they dropped and make them stand in rows against the wood-pile, pretending they were armies of red soldiers. The brightest and reddest ones were the generals, the paler ones the privates. And the wild cherries tasted delicious.
One day Peter was crying bitterly. The old woman had beaten him and he was very sad.
“Come away,” said Janet. “We will go to the mill, for I can hear the grinding going on. No one will notice if we slip into the field, and we can look right in and see the wheel itself.”
Peter forgot all about his trouble and stopped crying, for she had never allowed him to go so near the wheel before. They set off and went round the back of the mill buildings. Oh, how charmed he was! Janet lifted him up and he looked through the big hole. Round and round went the great spokes of the wheel, and the water, clear as crystal in the darkness, dripped from it and fell in showers into the brown swirl below. The sides of the walls were green with slime and little clumps of fern, and the long mosses streamed down like tresses of emerald-coloured hair. At last he drew back and she sat him on the ground. Then they turned round to go home, and nearly jumped out of their skins, for there was the miller looking at them. He was a tall young man, with a brown face and clothes covered with white dust; even the leather leggings he wore were white, and his hat, which he had pushed back, was white too.
“Well, my man,” said he to Peter, “and what do you think of the wheel?”