The Cuckoo Clock | Page 4

Any way, it was very delicious and wonderful. At the door stood, one
on each side, two solemn mandarins; or, to speak more correctly,
perhaps I should say, a mandarin and his wife, for the right-hand figure
was evidently intended to be a lady.
Miss Grizzel gently touched their heads. Forthwith, to Griselda's
astonishment, they began solemnly to nod.
"Oh, how do you make them do that, Aunt Grizzel?" she exclaimed.
"Never you mind, my dear; it wouldn't do for you to try to make them
nod. They wouldn't like it," replied Miss Grizzel mysteriously.
"Respect to your elders, my dear, always remember that. The
mandarins are many years older than you--older than I myself, in fact."

Griselda wondered, if this were so, how it was that Miss Grizzel took
such liberties with them herself, but she said nothing.
"Here is my last summer's pot-pourri," continued Miss Grizzel,
touching a great china jar on a little stand, close beside the cabinet.
"You may smell it, my dear."
Nothing loth, Griselda buried her round little nose in the fragrant
leaves.
"It's lovely," she said. "May I smell it whenever I like, Aunt Grizzel?"
"We shall see," replied her aunt. "It isn't every little girl, you know, that
we could trust to come into the great saloon alone."
"No," said Griselda meekly.
Miss Grizzel led the way to a door opposite to that by which they had
entered. She opened it and passed through, Griselda following, into a
small ante-room.
"It is on the stroke of ten," said Miss Grizzel, consulting her watch;
"now, my dear, you shall make acquaintance with our cuckoo."
The cuckoo "that lived in a clock!" Griselda gazed round her eagerly.
Where was the clock? She could see nothing in the least like one, only
up on the wall in one corner was what looked like a miniature house, of
dark brown carved wood. It was not so very like a house, but it
certainly had a roof--a roof with deep projecting eaves; and, looking
closer, yes, it was a clock, after all, only the figures, which had once
been gilt, had grown dim with age, like everything else, and the hands
at a little distance were hardly to be distinguished from the face.
Miss Grizzel stood perfectly still, looking up at the clock; Griselda
beside her, in breathless expectation. Presently there came a sort of
distant rumbling. Something was going to happen. Suddenly two little
doors above the clock face, which Griselda had not known were there,
sprang open with a burst and out flew a cuckoo, flapped his wings, and

uttered his pretty cry, "Cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo!" Miss Grizzel
counted aloud, "Seven, eight, nine, ten." "Yes, he never makes a
mistake," she added triumphantly. "All these long years I have never
known him wrong. There are no such clocks made nowadays, I can
assure you, my dear."
"But is it a clock? Isn't he alive?" exclaimed Griselda. "He looked at me
and nodded his head, before he flapped his wings and went in to his
house again--he did indeed, aunt," she said earnestly; "just like saying,
'How do you do?' to me."
Again Miss Grizzel smiled, the same odd yet pleased smile that
Griselda had seen on her face at breakfast. "Just what Sybilla used to
say," she murmured. "Well, my dear," she added aloud, "it is quite right
he should say, 'How do you do?' to you. It is the first time he has seen
you, though many a year ago he knew your dear grandmother, and your
father, too, when he was a little boy. You will find him a good friend,
and one that can teach you many lessons."
"What, Aunt Grizzel?" inquired Griselda, looking puzzled.
"Punctuality, for one thing, and faithful discharge of duty," replied
Miss Grizzel.
"May I come to see the cuckoo--to watch for him coming out,
sometimes?" asked Griselda, who felt as if she could spend all day
looking up at the clock, watching for her little friend's appearance.
"You will see him several times a day," said her aunt, "for it is in this
little room I intend you to prepare your tasks. It is nice and quiet, and
nothing to disturb you, and close to the room where your Aunt Tabitha
and I usually sit."
So saying, Miss Grizzel opened a second door in the little ante-room,
and, to Griselda's surprise, at the foot of a short flight of stairs through
another door, half open, she caught sight of her Aunt Tabitha, knitting
quietly by the fire, in the room in which they had breakfasted.

"What a very funny house it is, Aunt Grizzel," she said, as she followed
her aunt down the steps. "Every room has so many doors, and you
come back to where you were just when