The Cuckoo Clock | Page 2

for that I want it," said Griselda; "it's for the light I like it. This house all looks so dark to me, and yet there seem to be lights hidden in the walls too, they shine so."
The old servant smiled.
"It will all seem strange to you, no doubt," she said; "but you'll get to like it, missie. 'Tis a good old house, and those that know best love it well."
"Whom do you mean?" said Griselda. "Do you mean my great-aunts?"
"Ah, yes, and others beside," replied the old woman. "The rooks love it well, and others beside. Did you ever hear tell of the 'good people,' missie, over the sea where you come from?"
"Fairies, do you mean?" cried Griselda, her eyes sparkling. "Of course I've heard of them, but I never saw any. Did you ever?"
"I couldn't say," answered the old woman.
"My mind is not young like yours, missie, and there are times when strange memories come back to me as of sights and sounds in a dream. I am too old to see and hear as I once could. We are all old here, missie. 'Twas time something young came to the old house again."
"How strange and queer everything seems!" thought Griselda, as she got into bed. "I don't feel as if I belonged to it a bit. And they are all so old; perhaps they won't like having a child among them?"
The very same thought that had occurred to the rooks! They could not decide as to the fors and againsts at all, so they settled to put it to the vote the next morning, and in the meantime they and Griselda all went to sleep.
I never heard if they slept well that night; after such unusual excitement it was hardly to be expected they would. But Griselda, being a little girl and not a rook, was so tired that two minutes after she had tucked herself up in bed she was quite sound asleep, and did not wake for several hours.
"I wonder what it will all look like in the morning," was her last waking thought. "If it was summer now, or spring, I shouldn't mind--there would always be something nice to do then."
As sometimes happens, when she woke again, very early in the morning, long before it was light, her thoughts went straight on with the same subject.
"If it was summer now, or spring," she repeated to herself, just as if she had not been asleep at all--like the man who fell into a trance for a hundred years just as he was saying "it is bitt--" and when he woke up again finished the sentence as if nothing had happened--"erly cold." "If only it was spring," thought Griselda.
Just as she had got so far in her thoughts, she gave a great start. What was it she heard? Could her wish have come true? Was this fairyland indeed that she had got to, where one only needs to wish, for it to _be_? She rubbed her eyes, but it was too dark to see; that was not very fairyland-like, but her ears she felt certain had not deceived her: she was quite, quite sure that she had heard the cuckoo!
She listened with all her might, but she did not hear it again. Could it, after all, have been fancy? She grew sleepy at last, and was just dropping off when--yes, there it was again, as clear and distinct as possible--"Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!" three, four, five times, then perfect silence as before.
"What a funny cuckoo," said Griselda to herself. "I could almost fancy it was in the house. I wonder if my great-aunts have a tame cuckoo in a cage? I don't think I ever heard of such a thing, but this is such a queer house; everything seems different in it--perhaps they have a tame cuckoo. I'll ask them in the morning. It's very nice to hear, whatever it is."
And, with a pleasant feeling of companionship, a sense that she was not the only living creature awake in this dark world, Griselda lay listening, contentedly enough, for the sweet, fresh notes of the cuckoo's friendly greeting. But before it sounded again through the silent house she was once more fast asleep. And this time she slept till daylight had found its way into all but the very darkest nooks and crannies of the ancient dwelling.
She dressed herself carefully, for she had been warned that her aunts loved neatness and precision; she fastened each button of her grey frock, and tied down her hair as smooth as such a brown tangle could be tied down; and, absorbed with these weighty cares, she forgot all about the cuckoo for the time. It was not till she was sitting at breakfast with her aunts that she remembered it, or rather