Her thoughts were interrupted by a little whirr and clatter, which, thin and distant though it was, penetrated into her room.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.Her greatest fear since her arrival had been that this was a house "in which nothing was ever going to happen," and that "she would never get out of it." "It will be just as it has been all my life, seeing nothing, doing nothing--only instead of father it will be the aunts." The bird seemed to promise her adventure and excitement.To most people it would have been only a further sign of an old-fashioned household far behind the times.To Maggie it was thrilling and encouraging.He would remind her every hour of the day of the possibility of fun in a world that was full of surprises.She heard suddenly a step behind her and a dry voice saying:
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