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 always replied; "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 Demophoon out of hi