place, though, but for knowing this _must_ be so, no one would have
suspected it, for to all appearance the rooks were always the same--ever
and always the same.

Time indeed seemed to stand still in and all about the old house, as if
it and the people who inhabited it had got _so_ old that they could not
get any older, and had outlived the possibility of change.

But one day at last there did come a change. Late in the dusk of an
autumn afternoon a carriage drove up to the door of the old house, came
rattling over the stones with a sudden noisy clatter that sounded quite
impertinent, startling the rooks just as they were composing themselves
to rest, and setting them all wondering what could be the matter.

A little girl was the matter! A little girl in a grey merino frock and
grey beaver bonnet, grey tippet and grey gloves--all grey together, even
to her eyes, all except her round rosy face and bright brown hair. Her
name even was rather grey, for it was Griselda.

A gentleman lifted her out of the carriage and disappeared with her into
the house, and later that same evening the gentleman came out of the
house and got into the carriage which had come back for him again, and
drove away. That was all that the rooks saw of the change that had come
to the old house. Shall we go inside to see more?

Up the shallow, wide, old-fashioned staircase, past the wainscoted
walls, dark and shining like a mirror, down a long narrow passage with
many doors, which but for their gleaming brass handles one would not
have known were there, the oldest of the three old servants led little
Griselda, so tired and sleepy that her supper had been left almost