She listened. Yes, again there it was, "Cuckoo, cuckoo," as plain as possible, and nearer than before.
"Cuckoo," cried Griselda, "do come and talk to me. It's such a long time since I have seen you, and I have nobody to play with."
But there was no answer. Griselda held her breath to listen, but there was nothing to be heard.
"Unkind cuckoo!" she exclaimed. "He is tricking me, I do believe; and to-day too, just when I was so dull and lonely."
The tears came into her eyes, and she was
beginning to think herself very badly used, when suddenly a rustling in the bushes beside her made her turn round, more than half expecting to see the cuckoo himself. But it was not he. The rustling went on for a minute or two without anything making its appearance, for the bushes were pretty thick just there, and any one scrambling up from the pine-wood below would have had rather hard work to get through, and indeed for a very big person such a feat would have been altogether impossible.
It was not a very big person, however, who was causing all the rustling, and crunching of branches, and general commotion, which now absorbed Griselda's attention. She sat watching for another minute in perfect stillness, afraid of startling by the slightest movement the squirrel or rabbit or creature of some kind which she expected to see. At last—was that a squirrel or rabbit—that rosy, round face, with shaggy, fair hair falling over the eager blue eyes, and a general
look of breathlessness and over-heatedness and determination?
A squirrel or a rabbit! No, indeed, but a very sturdy, very merry, very ragged little boy.
"Where are that cuckoo? Does you know?" were the first words he uttered, as soon as he had fairly shaken himself, though not by any means all his clothes, free of the bushes (for ever so many pieces of jacket and knickerbockers, not to speak of one boot and half his hat, had been left behind on the way), and found breath to say something.