That night their mother said to their father:
"I have a new name for Willie."
"What is it?" asked their father.
"Tithonus," said their mother.
"When I was in school one of my lessons was about the beautiful goddess Aurora. She was said to open the rosy gates of dawn with her own fingers, so that the wonderful horses of Apollo might pass through to follow their shining track through the sky. She was so beautiful that Tithonus, who lived on the earth, always watched for the sunrise, that he might see Aurora. After a while she began to watch for him, too. She looked down every morning on the wakening world and found that he was almost the only one among mortals who enjoyed the glorious colors Apollo painted in the sky with his arrows of light. One morning she dared to sing to him, and then he answered that it was Aurora, and not Apollo, for whom he was watching each morning at sunrise. She loved him for this and became his wife.
"Being a goddess, she could live for ever, and she wanted Tithonus to live forever, too. The gods and goddesses never drink wine or water, but ambrosia from golden goblets. She brought a golden goblet of ambrosia to Tithonus on the earth, and, after he had taken a drink, told him the happy news that now he should live forever. But she had forgotten to ask of the gods for him the gift of eternal youth.
"For many years they loved each other dearly. Then Aurora saw that Tithonus was growing into a little old man.
"When he was one hundred years old he was shrunken to the size of a boy of ten.
"When he was two hundred years old he was no larger than a baby, only he was very lively, and could run as fast as a man.