"
"Ah, unfortunate child, and miserable me!" exclaimed Ceres. "For each of
those six pomegranate seeds you must spend one month of every year in
King Pluto's palace. You are but half restored to your mother. Only six
months with me, and six with that good-for-nothing King of Darkness!"
"Do not speak so harshly of poor King Pluto," said Proserpina, kissing
her mother. "He has some very good qualities; and I really think I can
bear to spend six months in his palace, if he will only let me spend the
other six with you. He certainly did very wrong to carry me off; but
then, as he says, it was but a dismal sort of life for him, to live in
that great gloomy place, all alone; and it has made a wonderful change
in his spirits to have a little girl to run up stairs and down. There
is some comfort in making him so happy; and so, upon the whole, dearest
mother, let us be thankful that he is not to keep me the whole year
round."
CHAPTER III
THE CHIMAERA
Once, in the old, old times (for all the strange things which I tell you
about happened long before anybody can remember), a fountain gushed out
of a hillside, in the marvellous land of Greece. And, for aught I know,
after so many thousand years, it is still gushing out of the very
selfsame spot. At any rate, there was the pleasant fountain, welling
freshly forth and sparkling adown the hillside, in the golden sunset,
when a handsome young man named Bellerophon drew near its margin.
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