A WONDER-BOOK
many others of the little fraternity and cousinhood as were still at Tanglewood, gathered about Eustace, and earnestly besought him for a story. The student yawned, stretched himself, and then, to the vast admiration of the small people, skipped three times back and forth over the top of a chair, in order, as he explained to them, to set his wits in motion.
‘Well, well, children,’ said he, after these preliminaries, ‘since you insist, and Primrose has set her heart upon it, I will see what can be done for you. And, that you may know what happy days there were before snowstorms came into fashion, I will tell you a story of the oldest of all old times, when the world was as new as Sweet Fern’s brand-new humming-top. There was then but one season in the year, and that was the delightful summer; and but one age for mortals, and that was childhood.’
‘I never heard of that before,’ said Primrose.
‘Of course, you never did,’ answered Eustace. ‘It shall be a story of what nobody but myself ever dreamed of,–a Paradise of children,–and how, by the naughtiness of just such a little imp as Primrose here, it all came to nothing.’
So Eustace Bright sat down in the chair which he had just been skipping over, took Cowslip upon his knee, ordered silence throughout the auditory, and began a story about a sad naughty child, whose name was Pandora, and about her playfellow Epimetheus. You may read it, word for word, in the pages that come next.
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