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Read Ebook: The Cuckoo Clock by Molesworth Mrs Crane Walter Illustrator
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Ebook has 822 lines and 39168 words, and 17 pages
CHAPTER
"WHY WON'T YOU SPEAK TO ME?"
MANDARINS NODDING
"MY AUNTS MUST HAVE COME BACK!"
SHE LOOKED LIKE A FAIRY QUEEN
"WHERE ARE THAT CUCKOO?"
"TIRED! HOW COULD I BE TIRED, CUCKOO?"
IT WAS A LITTLE BOAT
THE OLD HOUSE.
"Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country seat."
Once upon a time in an old town, in an old street, there stood a very old house. Such a house as you could hardly find nowadays, however you searched, for it belonged to a gone-by time--a time now quite passed away.
It stood in a street, but yet it was not like a town house, for though the front opened right on to the pavement, the back windows looked out upon a beautiful, quaintly terraced garden, with old trees growing so thick and close together that in summer it was like living on the edge of a forest to be near them; and even in winter the web of their interlaced branches hid all clear view behind.
But one day at last there did come a change. Late in the dusk of an autumn afternoon a carriage drove up to the door of the old house, came rattling over the stones with a sudden noisy clatter that sounded quite impertinent, startling the rooks just as they were composing themselves to rest, and setting them all wondering what could be the matter.
A little girl was the matter! A little girl in a grey merino frock and grey beaver bonnet, grey tippet and grey gloves--all grey together, even to her eyes, all except her round rosy face and bright brown hair. Her name even was rather grey, for it was Griselda.
A gentleman lifted her out of the carriage and disappeared with her into the house, and later that same evening the gentleman came out of the house and got into the carriage which had come back for him again, and drove away. That was all that the rooks saw of the change that had come to the old house. Shall we go inside to see more?
Up the shallow, wide, old-fashioned staircase, past the wainscoted walls, dark and shining like a mirror, down a long narrow passage with many doors, which but for their gleaming brass handles one would not have known were there, the oldest of the three old servants led little Griselda, so tired and sleepy that her supper had been left almost untasted, to the room prepared for her. It was a queer room, for everything in the house was queer; but in the dancing light of the fire burning brightly in the tiled grate, it looked cheerful enough.
"I am glad there's a fire," said the child. "Will it keep alight till the morning, do you think?"
The old servant shook her head.
"'Twould not be safe to leave it so that it would burn till morning," she said. "When you are in bed and asleep, little missie, you won't want the fire. Bed's the warmest place."
"It isn't for that I want it," said Griselda; "it's for the light I like it. This house all looks so dark to me, and yet there seem to be lights hidden in the walls too, they shine so."
The old servant smiled.
"Whom do you mean?" said Griselda. "Do you mean my great-aunts?"
"Ah, yes, and others beside," replied the old woman. "The rooks love it well, and others beside. Did you ever hear tell of the 'good people,' missie, over the sea where you come from?"
"I couldn't say," answered the old woman.
"My mind is not young like yours, missie, and there are times when strange memories come back to me as of sights and sounds in a dream. I am too old to see and hear as I once could. We are all old here, missie. 'Twas time something young came to the old house again."
The very same thought that had occurred to the rooks! They could not decide as to the fors and againsts at all, so they settled to put it to the vote the next morning, and in the meantime they and Griselda all went to sleep.
"I wonder what it will all look like in the morning," was her last waking thought. "If it was summer now, or spring, I shouldn't mind--there would always be something nice to do then."
As sometimes happens, when she woke again, very early in the morning, long before it was light, her thoughts went straight on with the same subject.
"If it was summer now, or spring," she repeated to herself, just as if she had not been asleep at all--like the man who fell into a trance for a hundred years just as he was saying "it is bitt--" and when he woke up again finished the sentence as if nothing had happened--"erly cold." "If only it was spring," thought Griselda.
"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.
"Thank you, Aunt Grizzel," said Griselda, going on with her bread and milk.
"Yes," said Miss Tabitha, "you shall see the cuckoo for yourself."
The old house looked quite as queer and quaint by daylight as it had seemed the evening before; almost more so indeed, for the view from the windows added to the sweet, odd "old-fashionedness" of everything.
"We have beautiful roses in summer," observed Miss Grizzel, catching sight of the direction in which the child's eyes were wandering.
"I wish it was summer. I do love summer," said Griselda. "But there is a very rosy scent in the rooms even now, Aunt Grizzel, though it is winter, or nearly winter."
Miss Grizzel looked pleased.
"My pot-pourri," she explained.
Miss Grizzel crossed the room to where stood in one corner a marvellous Chinese cabinet, all black and gold and carving. It was made in the shape of a temple, or a palace--Griselda was not sure which. Any way, it was very delicious and wonderful. At the door stood, one on each side, two solemn mandarins; or, to speak more correctly, perhaps I should say, a mandarin and his wife, for the right-hand figure was evidently intended to be a lady.
Miss Grizzel gently touched their heads. Forthwith, to Griselda's astonishment, they began solemnly to nod.
"Oh, how do you make them do that, Aunt Grizzel?" she exclaimed.
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