Her very steps had joy in them.
"Well, Griselda," whispered a voice, which she knew was the cuckoo's; "so you don't like to be told you are like your grandmother, eh ?" Griselda turned round sharply to look for the speaker, but he was not to be seen.

And when she turned again, the picture of the great saloon had faded away.
* * * * * One more picture.
Griselda looked again.

She saw before her a country road in full summer time; the sun was shining, the birds were singing, the trees covered with their bright green leaves--everything appeared happy and joyful.
But at last in the distance she saw, slowly approaching, a group of a few people, all walking together, carrying in their centre something long and narrow, which, though the black cloth covering it was almost hidden by the white flowers with which it was thickly strewn, Griselda knew to be a coffin.
It was a funeral procession, and in the place of chief mourner, with pale, set face, walked the same young man whom Griselda had last seen dancing with the girl Sybilla in the great saloon.
The sad group passed slowly out of sight; but as it disappeared there fell upon the ear the sounds of sweet music, lovelier far than she had heard before--lovelier than the magic cuckoo's most lovely songs--and somehow, in the music, it seemed to the child's fancy there were mingled the soft strains of a woman's voice.
"It is Sybilla singing," thought Griselda dreamily, and with that she fell asleep again.
* * * * * When she woke she was in the arm-chair by the ante-room fire, everything around her looking just as usual, the cuckoo clock ticking away calmly and regularly.

Had it been a dream only?
Griselda could not make up her mind.
"But I don't see that it matters if it was," she said to herself.

"If it was a dream, the cuckoo sent it to me all the same, and I thank you very much indeed, cuckoo," she went on, looking up at the clock.