APOLLO AND DIANA

35

standing before her. With harsh words, the goddess ordered the poor mother to leave the island at once; and, although it made Latona very sad to go from the home where she had been so happy, she hastened away, for she feared that otherwise Juno might harm her two beautiful babes. So she took a little one in each arm, and again set forth on her wanderings.

She came at length to a desert land, where there was not a blade of grass or a flower to rest her tired eyes. The hot sand burned her feet, and her lips were parched with thirst. The two babes in her arms sometimes seemed to weigh like lead, she was so tired from walking all day long. Yet her cloak was always held so as to shield them, not herself, from the sun. The mother was glad to

suffer anything for her children's sake.

She had been walking for days and days, the hot sand burning her tender feet, and her throat dry and parched for lack of water, when suddenly she saw in the distance a clump of trees, and a glimmer of blue water amid the green.

The hope of relief gave her new strength, and she hastened toward the spot. When she came to it, she found a lake of clear, blue water. All about it tall reeds were growing, and some rough peasants were plucking them and binding them in sheaves.

Latona bent and tried to reach the pure water with her lips, for both her arms were burdened with the children. But she started up again, when the men, in a very rude and unkind tone, ordered her not to drink.

"What!" said Latona in surprise, "surely you will not forbid me to drink of this pure water, which the gods have put here for all to enjoy! I am weary from long wander

ing over the desert, and my lips are parched with thirst.” The water looked so cool and inviting that Latona once more bent to drink of it.

But the men only renewed their rude talk and threatened that, if she did not go away, they would do her some harm. Then Latona began to plead, with tears in her eyes. "Surely, if you have no pity for me," she said, "you cannot be so cruel to these little children who stretch out their arms to you." And, as she put aside her cloak, the little boy and girl really did stretch out their tiny baby fingers, as though to beg these hard-hearted men to be more gentle.

But they were very hard-hearted indeed, and for answer they began to kick mud and stones into the water, so that in a few moments the clear lake had become a muddy pool, and the water was unfit to drink.

Then Latona became very angry, and raising her eyes to heaven she cried, "If there is any one to hear me, and any justice among the gods, let these men live forever in that pool!"

The gods heard her prayer, and the men were at once changed into frogs; and to this day they haunt the quiet pools, now sitting on the rocks, now leaping into the water with ugly croaks.

As for Latona, her time of suffering was almost over. The twin babes for whom she had borne so much, grew up to repay her, as well as children ever can repay their parents.

Jupiter, the god who had sent them to Latona in her loneliness, had given them his own godlike nature; and when next we hear of them, Apollo is the great god of the sun and of music, and Diana, his beautiful twin sister, is

the goddess of the moon. mother that her lightest wish was a law to them, and nothing that she asked of them was left ungranted.

So much did they honor their

THE BROOK

I COME from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,

For men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling.

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel.

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,

For men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel-covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,

For men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

ECHO AND NARCISSUS

THIS is the story of a maiden who came to grief because she talked too much, and because she always wanted to have the last word. You can find out for yourselves whether or not it is true, any day when you walk in the woods or go through a tunnel. In fact, I should not wonder if most of you have already tried giving some call when you are passing under a bridge, in order to hear the queer little spirit that lives in such places, and takes delight in mockingly answering back.

Poor Echo! Now she is nothing but a voice, but there was a time when she danced and sang in the green woods with the other nymphs. She had one great fault, however, she was too talkative; and the worst of it