the apartments are illuminated with
diamond lamps. You never saw anything half so magnificent as my throne. If
you like, you may sit down on it, and be my little queen, and I will sit
on the footstool."

"I don't care for golden palaces and thrones," sobbed Proserpina. "Oh, my
mother, my mother! Carry me back to my mother!"

But King Pluto, as he called himself, only shouted to his steeds to go
faster.

"Pray do not be foolish, Proserpina," said he, in rather a sullen tone. "I
offer you my palace and my crown, and all the riches that are under the
earth; and you treat me as if I were doing you an injury. The one thing
which my palace needs is a merry little maid, to run upstairs and down,
and cheer up the rooms with her smile. And this is what you must do for
King Pluto."

"Never!" answered Proserpina, looking as miserable as she could. "I shall
never smile again till you set me down at my mother's door."

But she might just as well have talked to the wind that whistled past
them; for Pluto urged on his horses, and went faster than ever. Proserpina
continued to cry out, and screamed so long and so loudly, that her poor
little voice was almost screamed away; and when it was nothing but a
whisper, she happened to cast her eyes over a great, broad field of waving
grain--and whom do you think she saw? Who, but Mother Ceres, making the
corn grow, and too busy to notice the golden chariot as it went rattling
along. The child mustered all her strength, and gave one more scream, but
was out of sight before Ceres had time to turn her head.

King Pluto had taken a road which now began to grow excessively gloomy. It
was bordered on each side with rocks and precipices, between which the
rumbling of the chariot-wheels was reverberated with a noise like rolling
thunder. The trees and bushes that grew in the crevices of the rocks had
very dismal foliage; and by and by, although it was hardly noon, the air
became obscured with a gray twilight. The black horses had rushed along so
swiftly, that they were already beyond the limits of the sunshine. But the
duskier it grew, the more did Pluto's visage assume an air of
satisfaction. After all, he was not an ill-looking person, especially when
he left off twisting his features into a smile that did not belong to
them. Proserpina peeped at his face through the gathering dusk, and hoped
that he might not be so very wicked as she at first thought him.

"Ah, this twilight is truly refresh