E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Chuck Greif, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 15569-h.htm or 15569-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/5/6/15569/15569-h/15569-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/5/6/15569/15569-h.zip) THE CUCKOO CLOCK by MRS. MOLESWORTH Author of "Herr Baby," "Carrots," "Grandmother Dear," etc. Illustrated by Walter Crane London: MacMillan and Co., and New York. 1895 [Illustration: IT WAS A LITTLE BOAT.] [Illustration] TO MARY JOSEPHINE, AND TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF HER BROTHER, THOMAS GRINDAL, BOTH FRIENDLY LITTLE CRITICS OF MY CHILDREN'S STORIES. Edinburgh, 1877. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE OLD HOUSE II. _IM_PATIENT GRISELDA III. OBEYING ORDERS IV. THE COUNTRY OF THE NODDING MANDARINS V. PICTURES VI. RUBBED THE WRONG WAY VII. BUTTERFLY-LAND VIII. MASTER PHIL IX. UP AND DOWN THE CHIMNEY X. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON XI. "CUCKOO, CUCKOO, GOOD-BYE!" LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. "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 CHAPTER I. 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. There was a colony of rooks in this old garden. Year after year they held their parliaments and cawed and chattered and fussed; year after year they built their nests and hatched their eggs; year after year, I _suppose_, the old ones gradually died off and the young ones took their place, though, but for knowing this _must_ be so, no one would have suspected it, for to all appearance the rooks were always the same--ever and always the same. Time indeed seemed to stand still in and all about the old house, as if it and the people who inhabited it had got _so_ old that they could not get any older, and had outlived the possibility of change.