nion--not so much for
play, as for some one to play with. She had lessons, of course, just as
many as in the winter; but with the long days, there seemed to come a
quite unaccountable increase of play-time, and Griselda sometimes found
it hang heavy on her hands. She had not seen or heard anything of the
cuckoo either, save, of course, in his "official capacity" of
time-teller, for a very long time.

"I suppose," she thought, "he thinks I don't need amusing, now that the
fine days are come and I can play in the garden; and certainly, if I had
_any one_ to play with, the garden would be perfectly lovely."

But, failing companions, she did the best she could for herself, and
this was why she loved the path down into the wood so much. There was a
sort of mystery about it; it might have been the path leading to the
cottage of Red-Ridinghood's grandmother, or a path leading to fairyland
itself. There were all kinds of queer, nice, funny noises to be heard
there--in one part of it especially, where Griselda made herself a seat
of some moss-grown stones, and where she came so often that she got to
know all the little flowers growing close round about, and even the
particular birds whose nests were hard by.

She used to sit there and _fancy_--fancy that she heard the wood-elves
chattering under their breath, or the little underground gnomes and
kobolds hammering at their fairy forges. And the tinkling of the brook
in the distance sounded like the enchanted bells round the necks of the
fairy kine, who are sent out to pasture sometimes on the upper world
hillsides. For Griselda's head was crammed full, perfectly full, of
fairy lore; and the mandarins' country, and butterfly-land, were quite
as real to her as the every-day world about her.

But all this time she was not forgotten by the cuckoo, as you will see.

One day she was sitting in her favourite nest, feeling, notwithstanding
the sunshine, and the flowers, and the soft sweet air, and the pleasant
sounds all about, rather dull and lonely. For though it was only May, it
was really quite a hot day, and Griselda had been all the morning at her
lessons, and had tried very hard, and done them very well, and now she
felt as if she deserved some reward. Suddenly in the distance, she heard
a well-known sound, "Cuckoo, cuckoo."

"Can that be the cuckoo?" she said to herself; and in a moment she felt
sure that it must be. For, for some reason that I do not know enough
about the