The whirr was followed by the voice, clear, self-confident and cheerful, of a cuckoo.
Maggie was in an instant out of bed, into the passage and standing, in her nightdress, before a high, old cuckoo-clock that stood at the top of the stairs.

The wooden bird, looking down at her in friendly fashion, "cuckooed" eight times, flapped his wings at her and disappeared.

It is a sufficient witness to Maggie's youth and inexperience that she was enraptured by this event.

It was not only that she had never seen a cuckoo-clock before; she had, for that matter, never heard of the existence of such a thing.

It gave her greater happiness than any bare mechanical discovery could have done.
The bird seemed to have come to her, in the friendliest way, to remove some of the chilly passivity of the house.