Page:Fairy Tales for Worker's Children.djvu/70

 this qustionquestion [sic] stands between me and all other people who do not ask the question like a big wall and this makes me so lonesome."

The little Dryad laughed and her pretty face became sweeter and more tender than before.

"You are mistaken, little Paul," she said softly. "You are not alone. Hundreds and thousands ask the same question, sad and troubled. Put your ear down to the earth and tell me what you hear."

Paul obeyed. At first he heard only an indistinct sighing and whispering, then he thought he heard a terrible weeping and crying, and at last he heard words.

"Mother, I am hungry, why is there nothing to eat?" cried a child's voice.

"I am stifling in this hot city, why can't I go to the country like my rich schoolmates?" murmured a boy's voice.

"I work all day, why are wages so low that I scarcely have enough to live on?" sobbed a woman's voice.

"Why have the idlers everything and the workers nothing?" said a man's voice threateningly.

And than all the voices rang together, crying, murmuring, sobbing, threatening, "Why? Why?"

Paul sat up, looked at the little Dryad who sat very quietly near him and asked, "Who are these people whom I heard?"

"They are your people," replied the little Dryad. "That is your family. You have heard all the languages in the world, you will hear questions from all mouths, angrily, anxiously, threateningly. Every day new voices join the chorus, and when the thousands of voices become millions and billions, then there will be an end to the misery and poverty and to those lazy parasites."

"When will that be?" asked Paul eagerly.

"That I cannot tell you, I know only this—every time I put 64