"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.
"When he was three hundred years old Aurora could scarcely find him,
save as his song told her where he was. With his head bent down to the
ground he did not look like a man, and he made his home by the dusty
roadside. But every sunrise he sat upon the tallest spear of grass he
could find and chirped to Aurora as she opened the gates of dawn for
Apollo. After years and years Aurora forgot all about the little gray
grasshopper, but I don't think Tithonus has forgotten her, for he and
all his grasshopper friends chirp the same song as when he first came to
live among them."
"Poor old Tithonus!" said Bessie.
"Why, no," said her father; "mother said he could never die. Maybe it
was Tithonus who gave you molasses to-day. Yes, perhaps that was
ambrosia instead of molasses that the gray grasshopper dropped from
his lips."
"Oh, don't tell any more!" laughed both Willie and Bessie.
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