"Come back! come back!" the girls called, but no answer came up from the
great opening or from the forest near them. Only Echo marked their cry
of "Proserpina, oh, Proserpina, come back!" "She has vanished," the
girls whispered. "I always felt as though she had wings beneath that
plain brown dress she wore," said one.
"But who can tell Queen Ceres, her mother?" they asked one another.
No one could go alone, so they all went together to Queen Ceres and told
her what had happened.
[Illustration: CERES. From a painting in Pompeii.]
The good queen wept bitterly. That day she laid aside her regal robes
and began her search for Proserpina. Up and down the world went this
royal mother seeking for her lost daughter. At last she came to the land
of King Celeus. When Ceres reached his land she was so ragged and poor
that she was glad to earn money by taking care of the king's baby son.
As nurse to the little prince, Queen Ceres was almost comforted.
Because she was the goddess of the wheat and the fruits, the crops upon
the land of King Celeus, while she was there, were very wonderful. In
the land near Mount Aetna, where Proserpina had been lost, no rain fell
and no corn nor apples grew.
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