Violet Jacob > Stories told by the miller

208 STORIES TOLD BY THE MILLER
“If you listen hard enough, you’ll hear the
grass grow,” said the miller, “and if you listen
long enough, you’ll hear about the man.”
Once upon a time, as I said before, there
was a Princess who had five elder sisters, the
most beautiful ladies ever seen ; and their father
thought a deal of them, but not much of the
youngest, who was small and not nearly so
pretty. But she was very nice, all the same,
and the thing she loved best was to go hunting
after flowers. Nobody cared what she did or
where she went, and she spent all her days
wandering in woods and valleys looking for her
plants. There was little she did not know
about them, and if she had not been a Princess,
with no need to work, she might have made
her fortune by writing books about them and
their histories. One day as she roamed about
she came to a place she had never seen before—
a little valley full of great trees, with a winding
stream rushing through it like a silver thread.
Beside the water grew a clump of the most
lovely yellow irises.
She liked the spot so much that she returned
to it every day ; and she would sit for hours at