Grandfathers -- Fiction; Mountain life -- Switzerland -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Switzerland -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction
"It gets like that of itself," explained Peter.
"Look, look!" cried Heidi in fresh excitement, "now they have
turned all rose color! Look at that one covered with snow, and
that with the high, pointed rocks! What do you call them?"
"Mountains have not any names," he answered.
"O how beautiful, look at the crimson snow! And up there on the
rocks there are ever so many roses! Oh! now they are turning
grey! Oh! oh! now all the color has died away! it's all gone,
Peter." And Heidi sat down on the ground looking as full of
distress as if everything had really come to an end.
"It will come again to-morrow," said Peter. "Get up, we must go
home now." He whistled to his goats and together they all
started on their homeward way.
"Is it like that every day, shall we see it every day when we
bring the goats up here?" asked Heidi, as she clambered down the
mountain at Peter's side; she waited eagerly for his answer,
hoping that he would tell her it was so.
"It is like that most days," he replied.
"But will it be like that to-morrow for certain?" Heidi
persisted.
"Yes, yes, to-morrow for certain," Peter assured her in answer.
Heidi now felt quite happy again, and her little brain was so
full of new impressions and new thoughts that she did not speak
any more until they had reached the hut. The grandfather was
sitting under the fir trees, where he had also put up a seat,
waiting as usual for his goats which returned down the mountain
on this side.
Heidi ran up to him followed by the white and brown goats, for
they knew their own master and stall. Peter called out after
her, "Come with me again to-morrow! Good-night!" For he was
anxious for more than one reason that Heidi should go with him
the next day.
Heidi ran back quickly and gave Peter her hand, promising to go
with him, and then making her way through the goats she once
more clasped Snowflake round the neck, saying in a gentle
soothing voice, "Sleep well, Snowflake, and remember that I shall
be with you again to-morrow, so you must not bleat so sadly any
more." Snowflake gave her a friendly and grateful look, and then
went leaping joyfully after the other goats.
Heidi returned to the fir-trees. "O grandfather," she cried,
even before she had come up to him, "it was so beautiful. The
fire, and the roses on the rocks, and the blue and yellow
flowers, and look what I have brought you!" And opening the apron
that held her flowers she shook them all out at her grandfather's
feet. But the poor flowers, how changed they were! Heidi hardly
knew them again. They looked like dry bits of hay, not a single
little flower cup stood open. "O grandfather, what is the matter
with them?" exclaimed Heidi in shocked surprise, "they were not
like that this morning, why do they look so now?"
"They like to stand out there in the sun and not to be shut up
in an apron," said her grandfather.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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