or bread and milk (which was the simple
fare to which the child had always been accustomed), it is very probable
that she would soon have been tempted to eat it. But he left the matter
entirely to his cook, who, like all other cooks, considered nothing fit
to eat unless it were rich pastry, or highly seasoned meat, or spiced
sweet cakes--things which Proserpina's mother had never given her, and
the smell of which quite took away her appetite, instead of sharpening
it.

But my story must now clamber out of King Pluto's dominions, and see
what Mother Ceres has been about since she was bereft of her daughter.
We had a glimpse of her, as you remember, half hidden among the waving
grain, while the four black steeds were swiftly whirling along the
chariot in which her beloved Proserpina was so unwillingly borne away.
You recollect, too, the loud scream which Proserpina gave, just when the
chariot was out of sight.

Of all the child's outcries, this last shriek was the only one that
reached the ears of Mother Ceres. She had mistaken the rumbling of the
chariot wheels for a peal of thunder, and imagined that a shower was
coming up, and that it would assist her in making the corn grow. But, at
the sound of Proserpina's shriek, she started, and looked about in every
direction, not knowing whence it came, but feeling almost certain that
it was her daughter's voice. It seemed so unaccountable, however, that
the girl should have strayed over so many lands and seas (which she
herself could not have traversed without the aid of her winged dragons),
that the good Ceres tried to believe that it must be the child of some
other parent, and not her own darling Proserpina who had uttered this
lamentable cry. Nevertheless, it troubled her with a vast many tender
fears, such as are ready to bestir themselves in every mother's heart,
when she finds it necessary to go away from her dear children without
leaving them under the care of some maiden aunt, or other such faithful
guardian. So she quickly left the field in which she had been so busy;
and, as her work was not half done, the grain looked, next day, as if it
needed both sun and rain, and as if it were blighted in the ear and had
something the matter with its roots.

The pair of dragons must have had very nimble wings; for, in less than
an hour, Mother Ceres had alighted at the door of her home and found it
empty. Knowing, however, that the child was fond of sporting on the
seashore, s