Grandfathers -- Fiction; Mountain life -- Switzerland -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Switzerland -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction
Some one now knocked at the window and Heidi looked up and saw
her grandfather beckoning her to come home with him. She
promised the grandmother before leaving her that she would be
with her the next day, and even if she went out with Peter she
would only spend half the day with him, for the thought that she
might make it light and happy again for the grandmother gave her
the greatest pleasure, greater even than being out on the sunny
mountain with the flowers and goats. As she was going out
Brigitta ran to her with the frock and hat she had left. Heidi
put the dress over her arm, for, as she thought to herself, the
grandfather had seen that before, but she obstinately refused to
take back the hat; Brigitta could keep it, for she should never
put it on her head again. Heidi was so full of her morning's
doings that she began at once to tell her grandfather all about
them: how the white bread could be fetched every day from Dorfli
if there was money for it, and how the grandmother had all at
once grown stronger and happier, and light had come to her. Then
she returned to the subject of the rolls. "If the grandmother
won't take the money, grandfather, will you give it all to me,
and I can then give Peter enough every day to buy a roll and two
on Sunday?"
"But how about the bed?" said her grandfather. "It would be nice
for you to have a proper bed, and there would then be plenty for
the bread."
But Heidi gave her grandfather no peace till he consented to do
what she wanted; she slept a great deal better, she said, on her
bed of hay than on her fine pillowed bed in Frankfurt. So at
last he said, "The money is yours, do what you like with it; you
can buy bread for grandmother for years to come with it."
Heidi shouted for joy at the thought that grandmother would
never need any more to eat hard black bread, and "Oh,
grandfather!" she said, "everything is happier now than it has
ever been in our lives before!" and she sang and skipped along,
holding her grandfather's hand as light-hearted as a bird. But
all at once she grew quiet and said, "If God had let me come at
once, as I prayed, then everything would have been different, I
should only have had a little bread to bring to grandmother, and
I should not have been able to read, which is such a comfort to
her; but God has arranged it all so much better than I knew how
to; everything has happened just as the other grandmother said it
would. Oh, how glad I am that God did not let me have at once all
I prayed and wept for! And now I shall always pray to God as she
told me, and always thank Him, and when He does not do anything I
ask for I shall think to myself, It's just like it was in
Frankfurt: God, I am sure, is going to do something better still.
So we will pray every day, won't we, grandfather, and never
forget Him again, or else He may forget us."
"And supposing one does forget Him?" said the grandfather in a
low voice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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