At the back of the house there was a high vaulted building which had once been a chapel, though it had gone to rack and ruin. One whole wall and most of another had fallen down, ivy was growing through a window which had lost all its glass, and the roof looked as though it might collapse any day. The door was missing between this and the room next to it, which was also very dilapidated. Grass was growing between the stones of its paved floor, the walls were crumbling and part of the ceiling was down. The rest only held because strong pillars supported it. Uncle Alp put up some wooden partitions here and laid straw on the floor to make winter quarters for the goats. Beyond this room was a passage half in ruins, and with cracks in the outer wall so wide you could see the sky and the fields through them. But at the end of all this was a solid oak door, still fixed on its hinges, leading to a fine room, in quite good condition. It had panelled walls, and in one corner was an enormous white tiled stove, reaching nearly to the ceiling. It was decorated in blue with pictures of a huntsman with his dogs in a wood surrounding an old castle, and a fisherman dangling his rod in a calm lake beneath some oak trees. A seat was built on conveniently all round the stove, and as soon as Heidi came into the room with her grandfather, she ran straight over to it and sat down to look at the pictures. She slid along it until she reached the back of the stove, and came to a space between it and the wall, which might have been intended for storing apples, but which now held her bed. It had been brought from the loft, just as it was, with its mattress of hay, the sheet, and the heavy linen cover. Heidi was delighted to find it there.
‘Oh, Grandfather,’ she exclaimed happily, ‘my room! Isn’t it lovely? Where are you going to sleep?’
‘I thought you ought to sleep close to the stove, so that you won’t freeze,’ he told her. ‘Now come and see my room.’ She followed him into a smaller one, where he had set up his bed. There was a second door beside it, which Heidi opened and saw a huge kitchen, bigger than any she had ever seen. There was still much to be done to it, though Grandfather had patched it till the walls looked as though they were made up of a lot of little cupboards. He had mended the heavy old outer door too, with nails and screws so that it was possible now to shut it, and that was a comfort for outside lay ruins, hidden in tall weeds where beetles and spiders lurked.
Heidi liked their new home very much, and she had explored every nook and corner of it by the time Peter came to visit her next day. She took him over it, and would not let him go until he had seen all its surprises. She slept very well in her cosy corner, though at first she still thought herself back in the hayloft when she awoke in the mornings, and started up to see if the fir trees were so quiet because snow had fallen in the night. Then, remembering she was not in the hut, she used to feel almost stifled for a moment, though that went as soon as she heard her grandfather talking to the goats next door, and the goats bleating as though calling her to get up. Then, knowing that, whatever the place, she was still at home, she would jump out of bed and hurry out to the goats as quickly as she could.
On the fourth morning there, she said, ‘Today I must go and see Grannie. She’ll be missing me.’
But grandfather would not hear of it. ‘You can’t go today nor tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘The snow is deep on the mountain and still falling. It will be as much as Peter can do to get through, and a little thing like you would be buried in no time and no one would be able to find you. You’ll have to wait until the snow freezes hard, then you’ll be able to walk over it easily.’
She did not like having to wait, but there was much to do and she hardly noticed how the days flew by. She went to school, for one thing, and worked hard to learn all she could. Peter, on the other hand, was hardly ever there, but the teacher was a kind‐hearted man, who only said, ‘So Peter’s away again. School would do him good, but I expect the snow is too deep for him to get here.’ But Peter came down easily enough in the evening to visit Heidi.
After a few days of snow the sun shone again, glistening on the white ground, but soon disappearing again behind the mountains as though it did not like the winter scene nearly as well as the grass and flowers of summer. But when it was dark, the moon shone down on the cold snow and the frost came, so that next morning the air was crisp and the whole mountainside sparkled like crystal. Then Peter, expecting to sink into soft snow as usual, jumped out of his window and found himself spinning over the frozen surface like a riderless sleigh, but he picked himself up and went stamping about to see if the snow was really hard everywhere. He was delighted to find he could not kick up more than a tiny fragment of ice here and there. The hillside was frozen hard, and at last Heidi would be able to come up to see them. He went indoors and gulped down some milk, put a piece of bread in his pocket and announced, ‘I’m going to school.’
‘That’s a good boy,’ said his mother. ‘Learn all you can.’
He got out of the window again, for the door was of course quite frozen up, pulled his little sleigh after him, and shot off on it like a streak of lightning. Right through Dörfli he sped for he could not stop, but flew on down to the valley right past Mayenfeld, before the sleigh came to a standstill. He knew where he was, and decided happily that it was too late for school. It would take him a good hour to climb up to the village again, and lessons would already have started. There was no point in hurrying, so he took his time, and reached Dörfli just as Heidi and her grandfather were sitting down to dinner. He could not wait to tell them his great news, but burst in upon them, and announced, ‘It’s happened.’
‘You sound very fierce, General! What do you mean?’ asked Uncle Alp.
‘The frost,’ said Peter.
‘Oh, now I can go and see Grannie,’ cried Heidi, understanding this cryptic remark perfectly, and added, ‘Why weren’t you at school then, Peter? You could easily have come down on your sleigh.’ It seemed to her all wrong to stay away from school without good reason.
‘I got carried too far down, and then it was too late,’ he replied.
‘That’s desertion,’ said Uncle Alp, ‘and deserters get punished.’
Peter looked slightly alarmed and stood twiddling his cap, for he had a great respect for Uncle Alp.
‘And for a commander like you, it’s even worse,’ went on the old man. ‘What would you do to your goats if they were to take it into their heads to run away and disobey your orders?’
‘Beat them.’
‘What would you say, then, if a boy who behaved like a disobedient goat got beaten for it?’
‘Serve him right.’
‘Then listen to me, General. If you ever again let your sleigh carry you off when you ought to be at school, you can come to me afterwards to get what you deserve.’
Light dawned on Peter with that last remark, and he looked cautiously round the room to see if there was a stick anywhere about that might be used for such a purpose. But Uncle Alp continued in a friendly voice:
‘Now come and have something to eat, and then Heidi can go home with you. Bring her back in the evening and you can stay and have supper with us.’
Peter grinned widely at this unexpected change of tune, and sat down. Heidi was so excited at the thought of seeing Grannie again that she couldn’t eat any more and passed him the rest of her potatoes and cheese. Uncle Alp had already given him a plate piled high with food and he attacked it all with gusto. Heidi went to the cupboard, and put on the coat which Clara had sent her. She pulled the hood over her head, and stood beside Peter, ready and impatient for him to finish eating. ‘Come on now,’ she urged, as he reached the last mouthful, and off they went. She chattered away to Peter, telling him how miserable Daisy and Dusky had been on the first day in their new stall, refusing to eat, just standing quietly, with drooping heads.