“Yes,” said Griselda.  “My grandmother died in the summer, when all the flowers were out; and she was buried in a pretty country place, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Miss Grizzel, looking rather bewildered.

“And when she was a little girl she lived with her grandfather, the old Dutch mechanic,” continued Griselda, unconsciously using the very words she had heard in her vision.  “He was a nice old man; and how clever of him to have made the cuckoo clock, and such lots of other pretty, wonderful things.  I don’t wonder little Sybilla loved him; he was so good to her.  But, oh, Aunt Grizzel, how pretty she was when she was a young lady!  That time that she danced with my grandfather in the great saloon.  And how very nice you and Aunt Tabitha looked then, too.”

Miss Grizzel held her very breath in astonishment; and no doubt if Miss Tabitha had known she was doing so, she would have held hers too.  But Griselda lay still, gazing at the fire, quite unconscious of her aunt’s surprise.

“Your papa told you all these old stories, I suppose, my dear,” said Miss Grizzel at last.

“Oh no,” said Griselda dreamily.  “Papa never told me anything like that.  Dorcas told me a very little, I think; at least, she made me want to know, and I asked the cuckoo, and then, you see, he showed me it all.  It was so pretty.”

Miss Grizzel glanced at her sister.

“Tabitha, my dear,” she said in a low voice, “do you hear?”

And Miss Tabitha, who really was not very deaf when she set herself to hear, nodded in awestruck silence.

“Tabitha,” continued Miss Grizzel in the same tone, “it is wonderful!  Ah, yes, how true it is, Tabitha, that ’there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy’” (for Miss Grizzel was a well-read old lady, you see); “and from the very first, Tabitha, we always had a feeling that the child was strangely like Sybilla.”

“Strangely like Sybilla,” echoed Miss Tabitha.

“May she grow up as good, if not quite as beautiful—­that we could scarcely expect; and may she be longer spared to those that love her,” added Miss Grizzel, bending over Griselda, while two or three tears slowly trickled down her aged cheeks.  “See, Tabitha, the dear child is fast asleep.  How sweet she looks!  I trust by to-morrow morning she will be quite herself again:  her cold is so much better.”

CHAPTER VI.

RUBBED THE WRONG WAY.

    “For now and then there comes a day
    When everything goes wrong.”

Griselda’s cold was much better by “to-morrow morning.”  In fact, I might almost say it was quite well.

But Griselda herself did not feel quite well, and saying this reminds me that it is hardly sense to speak of a cold being better or well—­for a cold’s being “well” means that it is not there at all, out of existence, in short, and if a thing is out of existence how can we say anything about it?  Children, I feel quite in a hobble—­I cannot get my mind straight about it—­please think it over and give me your opinion.  In the meantime, I will go on about Griselda.