"My own little Proserpina," King Pluto used to say, "I wish you would like me a little better. Although I look rather a sad man, I am really fond of children, and if you would stay here with me always, it would make me happier than having hundreds of palaces like this."
"Ah," said Proserpina, "you should have tried to make me like you first before carrying me off, and now the best thing you can do is to let me go again; then I might remember you sometimes and think that you were as kind as you knew how to be. Perhaps I might come back to pay you a visit one day."
"No, no," answered Pluto, with his gloomy smile, "I will not trust you for that. You are too fond of living in the sunshine and gathering flowers. What an idle, childish thing to do! Do you not think that these diamonds which I have had dug out of the mine for you are far prettier than violets?"
"No, oh no! not half so pretty," said Proserpina, snatching them from Pluto's hand, and flinging them to the other end of the room. "O my sweet purple violets, shall I ever see you again?" and she began to cry bitterly.
But like most children, she soon stopped crying, and in a short time she was running up and down the rooms as when she had played on the sands with the sea-children. And King Pluto, sad and lonely, watched her and wished that he too was a child, and when Proserpina turned and saw the great King standing alone in his splendid hall, so grand and so lonely, with no one to love him, she felt sorry for him. She ran back and for the first time in all those six months she put her small hand in his. "I love you a little," she whispered, looking up into his face.
"Do you really, dear child?" cried Pluto, bending down his dark face to kiss her. But Proserpina was a little afraid, he was 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."