great king
standing in his splendid hall, and looking so grand, and so melancholy,
and so lonesome, was smitten with a kind of pity. She ran back to him,
and, for the first time in all her life, put her small, soft hand in his.

"I love you a little," whispered she, looking up in his face.

"Do you, indeed, my dear child?" cried Pluto, bending his dark face down
to kiss her; but Proserpina shrank away from the kiss, for though his
features were noble, they were very dusky and grim. "Well, I have not
deserved it of you, after keeping you a prisoner for so many months, and
starving you, besides. Are you not terribly hungry? Is there nothing which
I can get you to eat?"

In asking this question, the king of the mines had a very cunning purpose;
for, you will recollect, if Proserpina tasted a morsel of food in his
dominions, she would never afterwards be at liberty to quit them.

"No, indeed," said Proserpina. "Your head cook is always baking, and
stewing, and roasting, and rolling out paste, and contriving one dish or
another, which he imagines may be to my liking. But he might just as well
save himself the trouble, poor, fat little man that he is. I have no
appetite for anything in the world, unless it were a slice of bread of my
mother's own baking, or a little fruit out of her garden."

When Pluto heard this, he began to see that he had mistaken the best
method of tempting Proserpina to eat. The cook's made dishes and
artificial dainties were not half so delicious, in the good child's
opinion, as the simple fare to which Mother Ceres had accustomed her.
Wondering that he had never thought of it before, the king now sent one of
his trusty attendants, with a large basket, to get some of the finest and
juiciest pears, peaches, and plums which could anywhere be found in the
upper world. Unfortunately, however, this was during the time when Ceres
had forbidden any fruits or vegetables to grow; and, after seeking all
over the earth, King Pluto's servants found only a single pomegranate, and
that so dried up as to be not worth eating. Nevertheless, since there was
no better to be had, he brought this dry, old, withered pomegranate home
to the palace, put it on a magnificent golden salver, and carried it up to
Proserpina. Now it happened, curiously enough, that, just as the servant
was bringing the pomegranate into the back door of the palace, our friend
Quicksilver had gone up the front steps, on his errand to get Proserpi