Now the height was reached where he usually stayed, and where he was
going to remain for a while to-day. It was a little green table-land,
with so broad a projection that one could see from the top all round
about and far, far down into the valley. This projection was called the
Pulpit-rock, and here Moni could often stay for hours at a time, gazing
about him and whistling away, while his little goats quite contentedly
sought their feed around him.
As soon as Moni arrived, he took his provision bag from his back, laid
it in a little hole in the ground, which he had dug out for this
purpose, then went to the Pulpit-rock and threw himself on the grass in
order to enjoy himself fully.
The sky had now become a deep blue; above were the high mountains with
peaks towering to the sky and great ice-fields appearing, and far away
down below the green valley shone in the morning light. Moni lay there,
looking about, singing and whistling. The mountain wind cooled his warm
face, and as soon as he stopped whistling, the birds piped all the more
lustily and flew up into the blue sky. Moni was indescribably happy.
From time to time Maeggerli came to Moni and rubbed her head around on
his shoulder, as she always did out of sheer affection. Then she bleated
quite fondly, went to Moni's other side and rubbed her head on the other
shoulder. The other goats also, first one and then another, came to look
at their keeper and each had her own way of paying the visit.
The brown one, his own goat, came very cautiously and looked at him to
see if he was all right, then she would stand and gaze at him until he
said: "Yes, yes, Braunli, it's all right, go and look for your fodder."
The young white one and Swallow, so called because she was so small and
nimble and darted everywhere, like swallows into their holes, always
rushed together upon Moni, so that they would have thrown him down, if
he had not already been stretched out on the ground, and then they
immediately, darted off again.
The shiny Blackie, the goat belonging to the landlord of the Bath
House, Maeggerli's mother, was a little proud; she came only to within a
few steps of Moni, looked at him with her head lifted, as if she
wouldn't appear too familiar, and then went her way again. The big
Sultan, the billy-goat, never showed himself but once, then he pushed
away all he found near Moni, and bleated several times as significantly
as if he had information to give about the condition of the flock, whose
leader he felt himself to be.
Little Maeggerli alone never allowed herself to be crowded away from her
protector; if the billy-goat came and tried to push her aside, she crept
so far under Moni's arm or head that the big Sultan no longer came near
her, and so under Moni's protection the little kid was not the least bit
afraid of him. Otherwise she would have trembled if he came near her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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