She jumped out of bed and unfastened one of the window-shutters, then jumped in again to admire the little shoe in comfort. It was even prettier than she had thought it at the ball. She held it up and looked at it. It was about the size of the first joint of her little finger. "To think that I should have been dancing with you on last night!" she said to the shoe. "And yet the cuckoo says being big or little is all a matter of fancy. I wonder what he'll think of to amuse me next?" She was still holding up the shoe and admiring it when Dorcas came with the hot water. "Look, Dorcas," she said. "Bless me, it's one of the shoes off the Chinese dolls in the saloon," exclaimed the old servant. "How ever did you get that, missie? Your aunts wouldn't be pleased." "It just isn't one of the Chinese dolls' shoes, and if you don't believe me, you can go and look for yourself," said Griselda. "It's my very own shoe, and it was given me to my own self." Dorcas looked at her curiously, but said no more, only as she was going out of the room Griselda heard her saying something about "so very like Miss Sybilla." "I wonder what 'Miss Sybilla' _was_ like?" thought Griselda. "I have a good mind to ask the cuckoo. He seems to have known her very well." It was not for some days that Griselda had a chance of asking the cuckoo anything. She saw and heard nothing of him--nothing, that is to say, but his regular appearance to tell the hours as usual. "I suppose," thought Griselda, "he thinks the mandarins' ball was fun enough to last me a good while. It really was very good-natured of him to take me to it, so I mustn't grumble." A few days after this poor Griselda caught cold. It was not a very bad cold, I must confess, but her aunts made rather a fuss about it. They wanted her to stay in bed, but to this Griselda so much objected that they did not insist upon it. "It would be so dull," she said piteously. "Please let me stay in the ante-room, for all my things are there; and, then, there's the cuckoo." Aunt Grizzel smiled at this, and Griselda got her way. But even in the ante-room it was rather dull. Miss Grizzel and Miss Tabitha were obliged to go out, to drive all the way to Merrybrow Hall, as Lady Lavander sent a messenger to say that she had an attack of influenza, and wished to see her friends at once. Miss Tabitha began to cry--she was so tender-hearted. "Troubles never come singly," said Miss Grizzel, by way of consolation. "No, indeed, they never come singly," said Miss Tabitha, shaking her head and wiping her eyes. So off they set; and Griselda, in her arm-chair by the ante-room fire, with some queer little old-fashioned books of her aunts', which she had already read more than a dozen times, beside her by way of amusement, felt that there was one comfort in her troubles--she had escaped the long weary drive to her godmother's.