In vain came her cousin Larra, the next morning, to ask her to go in quest of crabs and sea-urchins with the other children. Ida went off alone on another quest. The old woman sat in the cave with the morning sun glancing upon her silver hair, and upon a most beautiful picture, to which she had just turned. Now, Ida was an affectionate child. She loved her father, although she but seldom saw him, as he was out upon the sea for weeks at a time; and she loved her aunt Lydian, and her cousins, and all who were kind to her; yet she could not but see that Apollo, with his golden lyre and flashing eyes, had something more glorious in him than she had ever seen in her father, even on that day when he came smiling home, bringing the largest fish he had ever caught; and Minerva's helmet was certainly more splendid than the piece of cloth aunt Lydian wore on her head; and cupids, with fluttering wings, were much prettier than her little brown-armed cousins without any. So she forgot all her old friends, and day and night her dreams were full of lofty forms with golden hair and faces like the noonday sun. And being an affectionate child, she liked to do something for those she loved; and she began to fancy what she could do for these unknown immortals of whom she dreamed. The old woman had retreated into the depth of the cave, whither Ida did not venture to follow her; and she would sit just within it, gazing through its dark arch upon the wide waters, and wondering if the bright sunbeams which pierced through the clouds, and slanted far down upon the distant sea, were not stairs by which she might ascend to Olympus. Then she would think of the boat her father made for her of the ivory tusks he once brought from a far-off land; of the pile of shells she had herself collected, all very valuable to her, but she doubted a little whether they would be much valued upon Olympus, and she could not go thither without some offering worthy of the immortals. One day she found upon the shore a shell curved like a beautiful vase. “Ah, this is just the thing!” she exclaimed. “I will fill it with honey; there is nothing so delicious as honey; even the immortals must like that!” And away she went, deep into a wooded dell, where the stores of the wild bee were hidden. How she found her way to Olympus is known only to herself. I believe she first climbed some rocks, then a cloud, then sprang over a rainbow bridge, and at last scaled a long sunbeam, which led her straight to the marble steps of Jupiter's high throne.