“An odd coincidence,” said the cuckoo.

“What would Mr. Kneebreeches think if I told him where I had been?” continued Griselda.  “Only, you see, cuckoo, I never tell anybody about what I see when I am with you.”

“No,” replied the cuckoo; “better not. (’Not that you could if you tried,’ he added to himself.) You’re not frightened now, Griselda, are you?”

“No, I don’t think I am,” she replied.  “But, cuckoo, isn’t this sea awfully big?”

“Pretty well,” said the cuckoo.  “Just half, or nearly half, the size of the moon; and, no doubt, Mr. Kneebreeches has told you that the moon’s diameter and circumference are respec——­”

“Oh don’t, cuckoo!” interrupted Griselda, beseechingly.  “I want to enjoy myself, and not to have lessons.  Tell me something funny, cuckoo.  Are there any mermaids in the moon-sea?”

“Not exactly,” said the cuckoo.

“What a stupid way to answer,” said Griselda.  “There’s no sense in that; there either must be or must not be.  There couldn’t be half mermaids.”

“I don’t know about that,” replied the cuckoo.  “They might have been here once and have left their tails behind them, like Bopeep’s sheep, you know; and some day they might be coming to find them again, you know.  That would do for ‘not exactly,’ wouldn’t it?”

“Cuckoo, you’re laughing at me,” said Griselda.  “Tell me, are there any mermaids, or fairies, or water-sprites, or any of those sort of creatures here?”

“I must still say ‘not exactly,’” said the cuckoo.  “There are beings here, or rather there have been, and there may be again; but you, Griselda, can know no more than this.”

His tone was rather solemn, and again Griselda felt a little “eerie.”

“It’s a dreadfully long way from home, any way,” she said.  “I feel as if, when I go back, I shall perhaps find I have been away fifty years or so, like the little boy in the fairy story.  Cuckoo, I think I would like to go home.  Mayn’t I get on your back again?”

“Presently,” said the cuckoo.  “Don’t be uneasy, Griselda.  Perhaps I’ll take you home by a short cut.”

“Was ever any child here before?” asked Griselda, after a little pause.

“Yes,” said the cuckoo.

“And did they get safe home again?”

“Quite,” said the cuckoo.  “It’s so silly of you, Griselda, to have all these ideas still about far and near, and big and little, and long and short, after all I’ve taught you and all you’ve seen.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Griselda humbly; “but you see, cuckoo, I can’t help it.  I suppose I’m made so.”

“Perhaps,” said the cuckoo, meditatively.

He was silent for a minute.  Then he spoke again.  “Look over there, Griselda,” he said.  “There’s the short cut.”

Griselda looked.  Far, far over the sea, in the silent distance, she saw a tiny speck of light.  It was very tiny; but yet the strange thing was that, far away as it appeared, and minute as it was, it seemed to throw off a thread of light to Griselda’s very feet—­right across the great sheet of faintly gleaming water.  And as Griselda looked, the thread seemed to widen and grow, becoming at the same time brighter and clearer, till at last it lay before her like a path of glowing light.