“Thank you, cuckoo,” said Griselda again; “but I can’t say I like this opinion about the other side of the moon any better than the first.  If you please, I would rather not talk about it any more.”

“Oh, but it’s not so bad an idea after all,” said the cuckoo.  “Lots of children, they say, get quite cured in the country of the little black dogs.  It’s this way—­for every time a child refuses to take the dog on his back down here it grows a pound lighter up there, so at last any sensible child learns how much better it is to have nothing to say to it at all, and gets out of the way of it, you see.  Of course, there are children whom nothing would cure, I suppose.  What becomes of them I really can’t say.  Very likely they get crushed into pancakes by the weight of the dogs at last, and then nothing more is ever heard of them.”

“Horrid!” said Griselda, with a shudder.  “Don’t let’s talk about it any more, cuckoo; tell me your own opinion about what there really is on the other side of the moon.”

The cuckoo was silent for a moment.  Then suddenly he stopped short in the middle of his flight.

“Would you like to see for yourself, Griselda?” he said.  “There would be about time to do it,” he added to himself, “and it would fulfil her other wish, too.”

“See the moon for myself, do you mean?” cried Griselda, clasping her hands.  “I should rather think I would.  Will you really take me there, cuckoo?”

“To the other side,” said the cuckoo.  “I couldn’t take you to this side.”

“Why not?  Not that I’d care to go to this side as much as to the other; for, of course, we can see this side from here.  But I’d like to know why you couldn’t take me there.”

“For reasons,” said the cuckoo drily.  “I’ll give you one if you like.  If I took you to this side of the moon you wouldn’t be yourself when you got there.”

“Who would I be, then?”

“Griselda,” said the cuckoo, “I told you once that there are a great many things you don’t know.  Now, I’ll tell you something more.  There are a great many things you’re not intended to know.”

“Very well,” said Griselda.  “But do tell me when you’re going on again, and where you are going to take me to.  There’s no harm my asking that?”

“No,” said the cuckoo.  “I’m going on immediately, and I’m going to take you where you wanted to go to, only you must shut your eyes again, and lie perfectly still without talking, for I must put on steam—­a good deal of steam—­and I can’t talk to you.  Are you all right?”

“All right,” said Griselda.

She had hardly said the words when she seemed to fall asleep.  The rushing sound in the air all round her increased so greatly that she was conscious of nothing else.  For a moment or two she tried to remember where she was, and where she was going, but it was useless.  She forgot everything, and knew nothing more of what was passing till—­till she heard the cuckoo again.