“What would you like to do?” said the cuckoo.  “You don’t want to go to see the mandarins again?”

“Oh no; I couldn’t dance.”

“Or the mermaids down under the sea?”

“Oh, dear, no,” said Griselda, with a little shiver, “it would be far too cold.  I would just like to stay where I am, if some one would tell me stories.  I’m not even sure that I could listen to stories.  What could you do to amuse me, cuckoo?”

“Would you like to see some pictures?” said the cuckoo.  “I could show you pictures without your taking any trouble.”

“Oh yes, that would be beautiful,” cried Griselda.  “What pictures will you show me?  Oh, I know.  I would like to see the place where you were born—­where that very, very clever man made you and the clock, I mean.”

“Your great-great-grandfather,” said the cuckoo.  “Very well.  Now, Griselda, shut your eyes.  First of all, I am going to sing.”

Griselda shut her eyes, and the cuckoo began his song.  It was something like what he had sung at the mandarins’ palace, only even more beautiful.  It was so soft and dreamy, Griselda felt as if she could have sat there for ever, listening to it.

The first notes were low and murmuring.  Again they made Griselda think of little rippling brooks in summer, and now and then there came a sort of hum as of insects buzzing in the warm sunshine near.  This humming gradually increased, till at last Griselda was conscious of nothing more—­everything seemed to be humming, herself too, till at last she fell asleep.

When she opened her eyes, the ante-room and everything in it, except the arm-chair on which she was still curled up, had disappeared—­melted away into a misty cloud all round her, which in turn gradually faded, till before her she saw a scene quite new and strange.  It was the first of the cuckoo’s “pictures.”

An old, quaint room, with a high, carved mantelpiece, and a bright fire sparkling in the grate.  It was not a pretty room—­it had more the look of a workshop of some kind; but it was curious and interesting.  All round, the walls were hung with clocks and strange mechanical toys.  There was a fiddler slowly fiddling, a gentleman and lady gravely dancing a minuet, a little man drawing up water in a bucket out of a glass vase in which gold fish were swimming about—­all sorts of queer figures; and the clocks were even queerer.  There was one intended to represent the sun, moon, and planets, with one face for the sun and another for the moon, and gold and silver stars slowly circling round them; there was another clock with a tiny trumpeter perched on a ledge above the face, who blew a horn for the hours.  I cannot tell you half the strange and wonderful things there were.