"How strange and queer everything seems!" thought Griselda, as she got into bed. "I don't feel as if I belonged to it a bit. And they are all _so_ old; perhaps they won't like having a child among them?" 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 never heard if _they_ slept well that night; after such unusual excitement it was hardly to be expected they would. But Griselda, being a little girl and not a rook, was so tired that two minutes after she had tucked herself up in bed she was quite sound asleep, and did not wake for several hours. "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. Just as she had got so far in her thoughts, she gave a great start. What was it she heard? Could her wish have come true? Was this fairyland indeed that she had got to, where one only needs to _wish_, for it to _be_? She rubbed her eyes, but it was too dark to see; _that_ was not very fairyland-like, but her ears she felt certain had not deceived her: she was quite, quite sure that she had heard the cuckoo! She listened with all her might, but she did not hear it again. Could it, after all, have been fancy? She grew sleepy at last, and was just dropping off when--yes, there it was again, as clear and distinct as possible--"Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!" three, four, _five_ times, then perfect silence as before. "What a funny cuckoo," said Griselda to herself. "I could almost fancy it was in the house. I wonder if my great-aunts have a tame cuckoo in a cage? I don't _think_ I ever heard of such a thing, but this is such a queer house; everything seems different in it--perhaps they have a tame cuckoo. I'll ask them in the morning. It's very nice to hear, whatever it is." And, with a pleasant feeling of companionship, a sense that she was not the only living creature awake in this dark world, Griselda lay listening, contentedly enough, for the sweet, fresh notes of the cuckoo's friendly greeting. But before it sounded again through the silent house she was once more fast asleep. And this time she slept till daylight had found its way into all but the _very_ darkest nooks and crannies of the ancient dwelling.