“I wonder what ‘Miss Sybilla’ was like?” thought Griselda.  “I have a good mind to ask the cuckoo.  He seems to have known her very well.”

It was not for some days that Griselda had a chance of asking the cuckoo anything.  She saw and heard nothing of him—­nothing, that is to say, but his regular appearance to tell the hours as usual.

“I suppose,” thought Griselda, “he thinks the mandarins’ ball was fun enough to last me a good while.  It really was very good-natured of him to take me to it, so I mustn’t grumble.”

A few days after this poor Griselda caught cold.  It was not a very bad cold, I must confess, but her aunts made rather a fuss about it.  They wanted her to stay in bed, but to this Griselda so much objected that they did not insist upon it.

“It would be so dull,” she said piteously.  “Please let me stay in the ante-room, for all my things are there; and, then, there’s the cuckoo.”

Aunt Grizzel smiled at this, and Griselda got her way.  But even in the ante-room it was rather dull.  Miss Grizzel and Miss Tabitha were obliged to go out, to drive all the way to Merrybrow Hall, as Lady Lavander sent a messenger to say that she had an attack of influenza, and wished to see her friends at once.

Miss Tabitha began to cry—­she was so tender-hearted.

“Troubles never come singly,” said Miss Grizzel, by way of consolation.

“No, indeed, they never come singly,” said Miss Tabitha, shaking her head and wiping her eyes.

So off they set; and Griselda, in her arm-chair by the ante-room fire, with some queer little old-fashioned books of her aunts’, which she had already read more than a dozen times, beside her by way of amusement, felt that there was one comfort in her troubles—­she had escaped the long weary drive to her godmother’s.

But it was very dull.  It got duller and duller.  Griselda curled herself up in her chair, and wished she could go to sleep, though feeling quite sure she couldn’t, for she had stayed in bed much later than usual this morning, and had been obliged to spend the time in sleeping, for want of anything better to do.

She looked up at the clock.

“I don’t know even what to wish for,” she said to herself.  “I don’t feel the least inclined to play at anything, and I shouldn’t care to go to the mandarins again.  Oh, cuckoo, cuckoo, I am so dull; couldn’t you think of anything to amuse me?”

It was not near “any o’clock.”  But after waiting a minute or two, it seemed to Griselda that she heard the soft sound of “coming” that always preceded the cuckoo’s appearance.  She was right.  In another moment she heard his usual greeting, “Cuckoo, cuckoo!”

“Oh, cuckoo!” she exclaimed, “I am so glad you have come at last.  I am so dull, and it has nothing to do with lessons this time.  It’s that I’ve got such a bad cold, and my head’s aching, and I’m so tired of reading, all by myself.”