The Cuckoo Clock | Page 4

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 you think you are ever so far off. I shall never be able to find my way about."
"Oh yes, you will, my dear, very soon," said her aunt encouragingly.
"She is very kind," thought Griselda; "but I wish she wouldn't call my lessons tasks. It makes them sound so dreadfully hard. But, any way, I'm glad I'm to do them in the room where that dear cuckoo lives."
CHAPTER II.
_IM_PATIENT GRISELDA.
"... fairies but seldom appear; If we do wrong we must expect That it will cost us dear!"
It was all very well for a few days. Griselda found plenty to amuse herself with while the novelty lasted, enough to prevent her missing very badly the home she had left "over the sea," and