`` How provoking ! '' exclaimed Pandora , pouting her lip . `` I wish the great ugly box were out of the way ! '' `` O come , do n't think of it , any more , '' cried Epimetheus . `` Let us run out of doors , and have some nice play with the other children . '' It is thousands of years since Epimetheus and Pandora were alive ; and the world , nowadays , is a very different sort of thing from what it was in their time . Then , everybody was a child . There needed no fathers and mothers to take care of the children ; because there was no danger , nor trouble of any kind , and no clothes to be mended , and there was always plenty to eat and drink . Whenever a child wanted his dinner , he found it growing on a tree ; and , if he looked at the tree in the morning , he could see the expanding blossom of that night 's supper ; or , at eventide , he saw the tender bud of to-morrow 's breakfast . It was a very pleasant life indeed . No labor to be done , no tasks to be studied ; nothing but sports and dances , and sweet voices of children talking , or carolling like birds , or gushing out in merry laughter , throughout the livelong day . What was most wonderful of all , the children never quarrelled among themselves ; neither had they any crying fits ; nor , since time first began , had a single one of these little mortals ever gone apart into a corner , and sulked . O , what a good time was that to be alive in ! The truth is , those ugly little winged monsters , called Troubles , which are now almost as numerous as mosquitoes , had never yet been seen on the earth . It is probable that the very greatest disquietude which a child had ever experienced was Pandora 's vexation at not being able to discover the secret of the mysterious box . This was at first only the faint shadow of a Trouble ; but , every day , it grew more and more substantial , until , before a great while , the cottage of Epimetheus and Pandora was less sunshiny than those of the other children . `` Whence can the box have come ? '' Pandora continually kept saying to herself and to Epimetheus . `` And what in the world can be inside of it ? '' `` Always talking about this box ! ''
said XXXXX , at last ; for he had grown extremely tired of the subject .
Epimetheus Pandora carolling day eventide first labor morning night vexation