Then she kissed the child, and it seemed to do him good, for he smiled and nestled closely into her bosom.

So Mother Ceres set her torch in a corner (where it kept burning all the while), and took up her abode in the palace of King Celeus, as nurse to the little Prince Demophoeon.  She treated him as if he were her own child, and allowed neither the king nor the queen to say whether he should be bathed in warm or cold water, or what he should eat, or how often he should take the air, or when he should be put to bed.  You would hardly believe me, if I were to tell how quickly the baby prince got rid of his ailments, and grew fat, and rosy, and strong, and how he had two rows of ivory teeth in less time than any other little fellow, before or since.  Instead of the palest, and wretchedest, and puniest imp in the world (as his own mother confessed him to be when Ceres first took him in charge), he was now a strapping baby, crowing, laughing, kicking up his heels, and rolling from one end of the room to the other.  All the good women of the neighborhood crowded to the palace, and held up their hands, in unutterable amazement, at the beauty and wholesomeness of this darling little prince.  Their wonder was the greater, because he was never seen to taste any food,—­not even so much as a cup of milk.

“Pray, nurse,” the queen kept saying, “how is it that you make the child thrive so?”

“I was a mother once,” Ceres replied always; “and having nursed my own child, I know what other children need.”

But Queen Metanira, as was very natural, had a great curiosity to know precisely what the nurse did to her child.  One night, therefore, she hid herself in the chamber where Ceres and the little prince were accustomed to sleep.  There was a fire in the chimney, and it had now crumbled into great coals and embers, which lay glowing on the hearth, with a blaze flickering up now and then, and flinging a warm and ruddy light upon the walls.  Ceres sat before the hearth with the child in her lap, and the firelight making her shadow dance upon the ceiling overhead.  She undressed the little prince, and bathed him all over with some fragrant liquid out of a vase.  The next thing she did was to rake back the red embers, and make a hollow place among them, just where the backlog had been.  At last, while the baby was crowing and clapping its fat little hands, and laughing in the nurse’s face (just as you may have seen your little brother or sister do before going into its warm bath), Ceres suddenly laid him, all naked as he was, in the hollow, among the red-hot embers.  She then raked the ashes over him, and turned quietly away.

You may imagine, if you can, how Queen Metanira shrieked, thinking nothing less than that her dear child would be burned to a cinder.  She burst forth from her hiding-place, and running to the hearth, raked open the fire, and snatched up poor little Prince Demophoeon out of his bed of live coals, one of which he was griping in each of his fists.  He immediately set up a grievous cry, as babies are apt to do when rudely startled out of a sound sleep.  To the queen’s astonishment and joy, she could perceive no token of the child’s being injured by the hot fire in which he had lain.  She now turned to Mother Ceres, and asked her to explain the mystery.