“Not half so pretty,” said Proserpina, snatching the gems from Pluto’s hand, and flinging them to the other end of the hall.  “Oh, my sweet violets, shall I never see you again?”

And then she burst into tears.  But young people’s tears have very little saltness or acidity in them, and do not inflame the eyes so much as those of grown persons; so that it is not to be wondered at if, a few moments afterward, Proserpina was sporting through the hall almost as merrily as she and the four sea nymphs had sported along the edge of the surf wave.  King Pluto gazed after her, and wished that he, too, was a child.  And little Proserpina, when she turned about and beheld this 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 afterward 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 servant 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 Proserpina away from King Pluto.