that box?"

"My dear little Pandora," answered Epimetheus, "that is a secret, and
you must be kind enough not to ask any questions about it. The box was
left here to be kept safely, and I do not myself know what it
contains."

"But who gave it to you?" asked Pandora. "And where did it come from?"

"That is a secret, too," replied Epimetheus.

"How provoking!" exclaimed Pandora, pouting her lip. "I wish the great
ugly box were out of the way!"

"Oh come, don't think of it any more," cried Epimetheus. "Let us run
out of doors, and have some nice play with the other children."

It is thousands of years since Epimetheus and Pandora were alive; and
the world, nowadays, is a very different sort of thing from what it
was in their time. Then, everybody was a child. There needed no
fathers and mothers to take care of the children; because there was no
danger, nor trouble of any kind, and no clothes to be mended, and
there was always plenty to eat and drink. Whenever a child wanted his
dinner, he found it growing on a tree; and, if he looked at the tree
in the morning, he could see the expanding blossom of that night's
supper; or, at eventide, he saw the tender bud of to-morrow's
breakfast. It was a very pleasant life indeed. No labor to be done, no
tasks to be studied; nothing but sports and dances, and sweet voices
of children talking, or carolling like birds, or gushing out in merry
laughter, throughout the livelong day.

What was most wonderful of all, the children never quarreled among
themselves; neither had they any crying fits; nor, since time first
began, had a single one of these little mortals ever gone apart into a
corner, and sulked. Oh, what a good time was that to be alive in! The
truth is, those ugly little winged monsters, called Troubles, which
are now almost as numerous as mosquitoes, had never yet been seen on
the earth. It is probable that the very greatest disquietude which a
child had ever experienced was Pandora's vexation at not being able to
discover the secret of the mysterious box.

This was at first only the faint shadow of a Trouble; but, every day,
it grew more and more substantial, until, before a great while, the
cottage of Epimetheus and Pandora was less sunshiny than those of the
other children.

"Whence can the box have come?" Pandora continually kept saying to
herself and to Epimetheus. "And what in the world can be inside of
it?"

"Always talking about this box!" said Epimetheus,