so dark and
severe-looking, and she shrank back.

"Well," said Pluto, "it is just what I deserve after keeping you
a prisoner all these months, and starving you besides. Are you not
dreadfully hungry, is there nothing I can get you to eat?"

In asking this Pluto was very cunning, as you will remember that if
Proserpina once tasted any food in his kingdom, she would never again
be able to go home.

"No, indeed," said Proserpina. "Your poor fat little cook is always
making me all kinds of good things which I do not want. The one thing
I should like to eat would be a slice of bread baked by my own mother,
and a pear out of her garden."

When Pluto heard this he began to see that he had made a mistake in
his way of trying to tempt Proserpina to eat. He wondered why he had
never thought of this before, and he at once sent a servant with a
large basket to get some of the finest and juiciest pears in the whole
world.

But this was just at the time when, as we know, Mother Ceres in her
despair had forbidden any flowers or fruit to grow on the earth, and
the only thing King Pluto's servant could find, after seeking all
over the world was a single dried-up pomegranate, so dried up as to
be hardly worth eating. Still, since there was no better to be had, he
brought it back to the palace, put it on a magnificent gold plate, and
carried it to Proserpina.

Now it just happened that as the servant was bringing the pomegranate
in at the back door of the palace, Mercury had gone up to the front
steps with his message to King Pluto about Proserpina.

As soon as Proserpina saw the pomegranate on the golden plate, she
told the servant to take it away again. "I shall not touch it, I can
assure you," she said. "If I were ever so hungry, I should not think
of eating such a dried-up miserable pomegranate as that."

"It is the only one in the world," said the servant, and he set down
the plate and went away.

When he had gone, Proserpina could not help coming close to the table
and looking at the dried-up pomegranate with eagerness. To tell the
truth, when she saw something that really suited her taste, she felt
all her six months' hunger come back at once.

To be sure it was a very poor-looking pomegranate, with no more juice
in it than in an oyster-shell. But there was no choice of such things
in King Pluto's palace, and this was the first fresh fruit Proserpina
had ever seen there, and the last she was ever likely to see, and