"Always talking about this box!" said Epimetheus at last; for he had grown extremely tired of the subject. "I wish, dear Pandora, you would try to talk of something else. Come, let us go and gather some ripe figs, and eat them under the trees for our supper. And I know a vine that has the sweetest and juiciest grapes you ever tasted." "Always talking about grapes and figs!" cried Pandora, pettishly.
"Well, then," said Epimetheus, who was a very good-tempered child, like many children in those days, "let us run out and have a merry time with our playmates."
"I am tired of merry times, and don't care if I never have any more!" answered our pettish little Pandora. "And, besides, I never do have any. This ugly box! I am so taken up with thinking about it all the time. I insist upon your telling me what is inside of it."
"As I have already said fifty times over, I do not know!" replied Epimetheus, getting a little vexed. "How, then, can I tell you what is inside?"
"You might open it," said Pandora, looking sideways at Epimetheus, "and then we could see for ourselves!"
"Pandora, what are you thinking of?" exclaimed Epimetheus.
And his face expressed so much horror at the idea of looking into a box which had been given to him on the condition of his never opening it, that Pandora thought it best not to suggest it any more. Still, however, she could not help thinking and talking about the box.
"At least," said she, "you can tell me how it came here."
"It was left at the door," replied Epimetheus, "just before you came, by a person who looked very smiling and intelligent, and who could hardly forbear laughing as he put it down. He was dressed in an odd kind of cloak, and had on a cap that seemed to be made partly of feathers, so that it looked almost as if it had wings."
"What sort of staff had he?" asked Pandora.