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 was reminded of it, by some little remark that was made about the friendly robins on the terrace walk outside.

“Oh, aunt,” she exclaimed, stopping short half-way the journey to her mouth of a spoonful of bread and milk, “have you got a cuckoo in a cage?”

“A cuckoo in a cage,” repeated her elder aunt, Miss Grizzel; “what is the child talking about?”

“In a cage!” echoed Miss Tabitha, “a cuckoo in a cage!”

“There is a cuckoo somewhere in the house,” said Griselda; “I heard it in the night.  It couldn’t have been out-of-doors, could it?  It would be too cold.”

The aunts looked at each other with a little smile.  “So like her grandmother,” they whispered.  Then said Miss Grizzel—­

“We have a cuckoo, my dear, though it isn’t in a cage, and it isn’t exactly the sort of cuckoo you are thinking of.  It lives in a clock.”

“In a clock,” repeated Miss Tabitha, as if to confirm her sister’s statement.

“In a clock!” exclaimed Griselda, opening her grey eyes very wide.

It sounded something like the three bears, all speaking one after the other, only Griselda’s voice was not like Tiny’s; it was the loudest of the three.

“In a clock!” she exclaimed; “but it can’t be alive, then?”

“Why not?” said Miss Grizzel.

“I don’t know,” replied Griselda, looking puzzled.