Janet and little Peter lived in an old white-washed cottage that stood
in a field by the border of the mill-pool. It was a tiny,
weather-stained cot, to which a narrow path led through a gap in the low
wall of the highroad. Across the road stood the mill itself, grey,
windowless, and solid, with stone steps leading up to a door, through
which, on a grinding day, you could hear the noise of the machinery and
see the dusty atmosphere within. Peter and Janet thought the mill-field
over the road a charming place; and so it was, for at one end the
overflow from the tree-hidden dam poured down its paved slide in a white
waterfall, to wander, a zigzagging stream, through the field and out,
under the road, to the pool near their cottage. From the farther side of
the dam the mill-lead ran evenly below the gnarled roots of the trees
shadowing its course, and was lost in that dark hole in the wall behind
which the flashing wheel turned. The water came racing out to join the
overflow and dive with it through the causeway, coming up in the pool
beyond. From there it meandered over the country into the river, which
carried it to the sea. On wild days in winter you might hear the roaring
sound of the North Sea beating against the coast.
Janet and her brother were orphans, and their lives were very hard; for
their grandmother, with whom they had been lately sent to live, was a
cruel old woman who beat poor little Peter when she was out of temper.
Janet came in for rough words, and blows, too, sometimes, although she
was almost seventeen, and old enough to take care of herself. Many a
time she longed to run away, but in her heart she knew that she would
never do so because she could not leave her brother alone. She was a
good girl, and a pretty one besides, for her hair was like the corn and
she was as slender as a bulrush. The neighbours whose boys and girls
passed on their way from school would not let their children have
anything to do with little Peter, for many thought that his wicked old
grandmother was a witch. The children had made a rhyme that they used to
sing. It was like this:
“Peter, Peter, the witch’s brat,
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?”
Peter did not know what to say, he was so much taken aback.
“When I was a little boy,” said the miller, “I was just like you, and
couldn’t keep away from a mill-wheel if there was one within twenty
miles. ‘When I’m a man,’ said I, ‘it’s a miller I’ll be.’ And a miller I
am.”
But little Peter was still too much startled to understand friendliness.
He pointed to the cottage over the road.
“You won’t tell grandmother we came here?” he asked, his eyes filling
with tears.
“Not I,” said the miller.
“She would beat him if you did,” remarked Janet.
“That’s bad,” observed the miller, pushing his hat farther back. “I had
a grandmother, too, when I was a little lad; she had a great cap and
horn spectacles.”
“And did she beat you?” said Peter, gaining courage.
“Not she!” exclaimed the miller. “But she used to comfort me if anyone
else did. Such fine tales she used to tell me, too—some out of a book
and some out of her head! I’ve got the book in the house now.”
Little Peter loved stories more than anything in the world, and every
moment he was growing less afraid of the miller.
“Oh, tell me one!” he cried. “Please tell me one!”
“Sit down, then,” he said, “and you, too, my pretty lass. The first I
can mind her telling me was about this very mill. Would you like to hear
about that?”
“Yes, yes!” cried little Peter.
And so they sat down by the mill-lead, and the miller began his story.