"Here!" gasped the meadow-grass; and she followed on, sobbing softly to
herself, as she sat down where, days ago, the brook had merrily sung.
"Why do you grieve?" asked the pebbles; and she heard them and
answered,--
"Because I am so sad. Things are never as I want them, and so I cry.
I am made to obey, and then, when the stars come out and I wish to stay
up, I am sent to bed; and the next morning, when I am so sleepy I can
hardly open my eyes, I am made to get up. Oh, this is a very sad
world!" And she wept afresh.
Then the flowers and the grasses and the pebbles, seeing her tears, all
said at once: "Would you like to stay here with us? Then you could
stay awake all night and gaze at the stars, and in the morning you need
not get up. You may lie in the brook's empty bed, and you need never
obey your parents any more."
Marie was silent a moment, and then a hundred small voices said, "Do,
oh, do!" And her tears fell faster and more fast, and larger and
larger, for she felt more abused than ever now the meadow had shown her
sympathy, as she thought. She kept dropping tears so quickly that by
and by even her sobbing could scarcely be heard for the splash, splash,
of the many drops that were falling on the white pebbles in the brook's
bed.
How they fell! The brown eyes grew dim, and Marie could not see. She
felt tiny hands pulling her down--down; and in a moment she had ceased
to be a little girl and had become a brook, while her weeping was the
murmur of little waves as they plashed against the stones.
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