Grandfathers -- Fiction; Mountain life -- Switzerland -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Switzerland -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction
"Oh, see, how beautiful! It looks as if many, many roses were growing
on those cliffs. Oh, now they are getting grey. Oh dear! the fire has
gone out and it is all over. What a terrible shame!" said Heidi quite
despondently.
"It will be the same again tomorrow," Peter reassured her. "Come now,
we have to go home."
When Peter had called the goats together, they started downwards.
"Will it be like that every day when we are up?" asked Heidi, eagerly.
"It usually is," was the reply.
"What about tomorrow?" she inquired.
"Tomorrow it will be like that, I am sure," Peter affirmed.
That made Heidi feel happy again. She walked quietly by Peter's side,
thinking over all the new things she had seen. At last, reaching the
hut, they found the grandfather waiting for them on a bench under the
fir-trees. Heidi ran up to him and the two goats followed, for they
knew their master. Peter called to her: "Come again tomorrow!
Good-night!"
Heidi gave him her hand, assuring him that she would come, and finding
herself surrounded by the goats, she hugged Snowhopper a last time.
When Peter had disappeared, Heidi returned to her grandfather. "Oh
grandfather! it was so beautiful! I saw the fire and the roses on the
rocks! And see the many, many flowers I am bringing you!" With that
Heidi shook them out of her apron. But oh, how miserable they looked!
Heidi did not even know them any more.
"What is the matter with them, grandfather? They looked so different!"
Heidi exclaimed in her fright.
"They are made to bloom in the sun and not to be shut up in an apron,"
said the grandfather.
"Then I shall never pick them any more! Please, grandfather, tell me
why the eagle screeches so loudly," asked Heidi.
"First go and take a bath, while I go into the shed to get your milk.
Afterwards we'll go inside together and I'll tell you all about it
during supper-time."
They did as was proposed, and when Heidi sat on her high chair before
her milk, she asked the same question as before.
"Because he is sneering at the people down below, who sit in the
villages and make each other angry. He calls down to them:--'If you
would go apart to live up on the heights like me, you would feel much
better!'" The grandfather said these last words with such a wild
voice, that it reminded Heidi of the eagle's screech.
"Why do the mountains have no names, grandfather?" asked Heidi.
"They all have names, and if you tell me their shape I can name them
for you."
Heidi described several and the old man could name them all. The child
told him now about all the happenings of the day, and especially about
the wonderful fire. She asked how it came about.
"The sun does it," he exclaimed. "Saying good-night to the mountains,
he throws his most beautiful rays to them, that they may not forget
him till the morning."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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