nce upon a time the earth was so very young and the people upon it so
pure and good that they could hear the morning stars as they sang
together. It was during the Golden Age, as it is now called, that one
morning in the early springtime a little group of girls were playing
together and gathering wild flowers.

One of these girls was named Proserpina. She was the merriest of them
all, though her dress was of the plainest brown. Her little feet danced
everywhere and her little fingers seemed to touch the flowers as lightly
as the butterfly that flitted by her.

Carelessly she danced close to a great opening in the ground. Looking
down she saw a yellow daffodil growing on the edge. Leaning over to pick
it, she felt herself caught by her dress, and the next minute found
herself sailing far down into the earth through the great crevice. She
was in a chariot drawn by black horses, which were driven by a driver
who seemed to be both deaf and dumb. He neither answered when she
pleaded with him to take her back, nor even seemed to hear her.

The girls who were left gathering wild flowers had missed
Proserpina almost the moment she was out of sight, but no one knew
what had happened.

"Come back! come back!" the girls called, but no answer came up from the
great opening or from the forest near them. Only Echo marked their cry
of "Proserpina, oh, Proserpina, come back!" "She has vanished," the
girls whispered. "I always felt as though she had wings beneath that
plain brown dress she wore," said one.

"But who can tell Queen Ceres, her mother?" they asked one another.

No one could go alone, so they all went together to Queen Ceres and told
her what had happened.

The good queen wept bitterly. That day she laid aside her regal robes
and began her search for Proserpina.