Page:The Enchanted Castle.djvu/291

 hand to the children—it held a ripe pomegranate.

"I see," said Mabel. "You just" She laid her fingers to the willow branch and the firm softness of a big peach was within them.

"Yes, just that," laughed Psyche, who was a darling, as any one could see.

After this Hebe gathered a few silver baskets from a convenient alder, and the four picked fruit industriously. Meanwhile the elder statues were busy plucking golden goblets and jugs and dishes from the branches of ash-trees and young oaks and filling them with everything nice to eat and drink that any one could possibly want, and these were spread on the steps. It was a celestial picnic. Then everyone sat or lay down and the feast began. And oh! the taste of the food served on those dishes, the sweet wonder of the drink that melted from those gold cups on the white lips of the company! And the fruit—there is no fruit like it grown on earth, just as there is no laughter like the laughter of those lips, no songs like the songs that stirred the silence of that night of wonder.

"Oh!" cried Kathleen, and through her fingers the juice of her third peach fell like tears on the marble steps. "I do wish the boys were here!"

"I do wonder what they're doing," said Mabel.

"At this moment," said Hermes, who had just made a wide ring of flight, as a pigeon does,