"Epimetheus, what have you in that box?"
"My dear little Pandora," answered Epimetheus, "that is a secret, and you must be kind enough not to ask any questions about it. The box was left here to be kept safely, and I do not myself know what it contains."
"But who gave it to you?" asked Pandora. "And where did it come from?"
"That is a secret, too," replied Epimetheus.
"How provoking!" exclaimed Pandora, pouting her lip. "I wish the great ugly box were out of the way!"
"O come, don't think of it any more," cried Epimetheus. "Let us run out of doors, and have some nice play with the other children."
It is thousands of years since Epimetheus and Pandora were alive; and the world nowadays is a very different sort of thing from what it was in their time. Then, everybody was a child. They needed no fathers and mothers to take care of the children; because there was no danger or trouble of any kind, and there were no clothes to be mended, and there was always plenty to eat and drink.
Whenever a child wanted his dinner, he found it growing on a tree; and if he looked at the tree in the morning, he could see the blossom of that night's supper; or at eventide he saw the tender bud of tomorrow's breakfast. It was a very pleasant life indeed. No labor to be done, no tasks to s be studied; nothing but sports and dances and sweet voices of children talking, or caroling like birds, or gushing out in merry laughter, throughout the livelong day.
What was most wonderful of all, the children never quarreled among themselves; neither had they any crying fits; nor since time first began had a single one of these little mortals ever gone apart into a corner and sulked. O what a good time was that to be alive in! The truth is, those ugly little winged monsters called Troubles, which are now almost as numerous as mosquitoes, had never yet been seen on the earth. It is probable that the very greatest disquietude which a child had ever felt was Pandora's vexation at not being able to discover the secret of the mysterious box.
This was at first only the faint shadow of a Trouble; but every day it grew more and-more real, until before a great while the cottage of Epimetheus and Pandora was less sunshiny than those of the other children.
"Whence can the box have come?" Pandora continually kept saying to herself and to Epimetheus. "And can be inside of it?"