E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Chuck Greif,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(www.pgdp.net)
IT WAS A LITTLE BOAT.
THE CUCKOO CLOCK
BY MRS. MOLESWORTH,
AUTHOR OF "HERR BABY," "CARROTS," "GRANDMOTHER DEAR," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER CRANE.
London: MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK.
1895
TO
MARY JOSEPHINE,
AND TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF HER BROTHER,
THOMAS GRINDAL,
BOTH FRIENDLY LITTLE CRITICS OF
MY CHILDREN'S STORIES.
Edinburgh, 1877.
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
"WHY WON'T YOU SPEAK TO ME?"
MANDARINS NODDING
"MY AUNTS MUST HAVE COME BACK!"
SHE LOOKED LIKE A FAIRY QUEEN
"WHERE ARE THAT CUCKOO?"
"TIRED! HOW COULD I BE TIRED, CUCKOO?"
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD HOUSE.
"Somewhat back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country seat."
Once upon a time in an old town, in an old street, there stood a veryold house. Such a house as you could hardly find nowadays, however yousearched, for it belonged to a gone-by time—a time now quite passedaway.
It stood in a street, but yet it was not like a town house, for thoughthe front opened right on to the pavement, the back windows looked outupon a beautiful, quaintly terraced garden, with old trees growing sothick and close together that in summer it was like living on the edgeof a forest to be near them; and even in winter the web of theirinterlaced branches hid all clear view behind.
There was a colony of rooks in this old garden. Year after year theyheld their parliaments and cawe