or
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.

"It will all seem strange to you, no doubt," she said; "but you'll get
to like it, missie. 'Tis a _good_ old house, and those that know best
love it well."

"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?"

"Fairies, do you mean?" cried Griselda, her eyes sparkling. "Of course
I've _heard_ of them, but I never saw any. Did you ever?"

"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."

"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 sometim