“Little girls should not ask so many questions,” replied Miss Grizzel, mysteriously.  “It is all right again, and that is enough.  During fifty years that cuckoo has never, till yesterday, missed an hour.  If you, in your sphere, my dear, do as well during fifty years, you won’t have done badly.”

“No, indeed, you won’t have done badly,” repeated Miss Tabitha.

But though the two old ladies thus tried to improve the occasion by a little lecturing, Griselda could see that at the bottom of their hearts they were both so happy that, even if she had been very naughty indeed, they could hardly have made up their minds to scold her.

She was not at all inclined to be naughty this day.  She had something to think about and look forward to, which made her quite a different little girl, and made her take heart in doing her lessons as well as she possibly could.

“I wonder when the cuckoo will have considered enough about my having no one to play with?” she said to herself, as she was walking up and down the terrace at the back of the house.

“Caw, caw!” screamed a rook just over her head, as if in answer to her thought.

Griselda looked up at him.

“Your voice isn’t half so pretty as the cuckoo’s, Mr. Rook,” she said.  “All the same, I dare say I should make friends with you, if I understood what you meant.  How funny it would be to know all the languages of the birds and the beasts, like the prince in the fairy tale!  I wonder if I should wish for that, if a fairy gave me a wish?  No, I don’t think I would.  I’d far rather have the fairy carpet that would take you anywhere you liked in a minute.  I’d go to China to see if all the people there look like Aunt Grizzel’s mandarins; and I’d first of all, of course, go to fairyland.”

“You must come in now, little missie,” said Dorcas’s voice.  “Miss Grizzel says you have had play enough, and there’s a nice fire in the ante-room for you to do your lessons by.”

“Play!” repeated Griselda indignantly, as she turned to follow the old servant.  “Do you call walking up and down the terrace ‘play,’ Dorcas?  I mustn’t loiter even to pick a flower, if there were any, for fear of catching cold, and I mustn’t run for fear of overheating myself.  I declare, Dorcas, if I don’t have some play soon, or something to amuse me, I think I’ll run away.”

“Nay, nay, missie, don’t talk like that.  You’d never do anything so naughty, and you so like Miss Sybilla, who was so good.”

“Dorcas, I’m tired of being told I’m like Miss Sybilla,” said Griselda, impatiently.  “She was my grandmother; no one would like to be told they were like their grandmother.  It makes me feel as if my face must be all screwy up and wrinkly, and as if I should have spectacles on and a wig.”

“That is not like what Miss Sybilla was when I first saw her,” said Dorcas.  “She was younger than you, missie, and as pretty as a fairy.”