‘Uncle Alp,’ was the answer.
This surprised the teacher even more. ‘Just let me hear you read again,’ he said cautiously, and Peter continued for another three lines. There was no mistake about it. He could read.
As soon as school was over, the teacher went across to the pastor to tell him the news, and they talked about the good influence that Heidi and her grandfather were having in the village.
After that when he got home each evening, Peter read one hymn aloud — one only. He could not be persuaded to try a second, nor did Grannie press him. It was a never failing source of wonder to Bridget, and sometimes after he had gone to bed, she would say to Grannie, ‘Now Peter has learnt to read, there’s no knowing what he may do!’
Once Grannie replied to her, ‘Yes, I’m glad for his sake that he has learnt something. But I shall be thankful when the spring is here, and Heidi can come again. They are somehow not the same hymns when Peter reads them, and I keep trying to fill in the gaps, and so I miss what comes next. So they don’t do me as much good as when Heidi reads them.’
The truth was that Peter made things as easy as possible for himself. When he came to a difficult word, he just left it out, thinking that a few words less among so many would make no difference to Grannie. Consequently there was sometimes little sense in what he read.
20
More Visitors
The winter passed, and it was May again. The last snows had disappeared, and the little mountain streams raced in full flood down to the valley. The mountain‐sides were green again, and bathed in warm, clear sunlight. The flowers were opening their petals among the fresh green grass. The gay young winds of spring blew over the tops of the fir trees, carrying off showers of old needles to make room for the new growth. High in the blue sky the old hawk hovered and circled once more, while the golden sunshine played round the hut, and made the ground warm and dry, and fit to sit upon.
Heidi was back on the mountain, running hither and thither to all her old haunts, unable as ever to decide which she liked best. She listened entranced to the sound of the wind blowing down from the heights, gathering strength as it came nearer, till it came up with the fir trees, and spent itself on their branches. She lay on the ground and watched the beetles in the grass. She listened to the hum and buzz of insects. It seemed to her that all those tiny creatures were singing ‘We’re on the mountain! We’re on the mountain!’ in tune with her own heart. Her lips parted and she drew in great draughts of the fine sparkling air, and thought that spring had never been so beautiful before.
The familiar sound of hammering and sawing also reached her ears, and presently she ran to the shed to see what Grandfather was doing there. In front of it stood a chair, quite finished, and he was busy making another.
‘Oh, I know what these are for!’ she cried gleefully. ‘We shall want them when they all come up from Frankfurt. This will be for Grandmamma, and the one you’re making for Clara. I suppose you’ll have to make a third,’ she added reluctantly, ‘— or do you think Miss Rottenmeier might not come?’
‘I really don’t know,’ he told her, ‘but it would be better to have a chair ready so that we can ask her to sit down if she does come.’ Heidi looked thoughtfully at the straight wooden chair, without arms, and tried to imagine Miss Rottenmeier sitting on it.
‘I don’t believe she would ever sit on a chair like this, Grandfather,’ she said at last.
‘Then we’ll invite her to sit outside on the turf featherbed,’ he replied quietly.
Heidi was not sure what this strange article of furniture might be, but Peter’s familiar whistling and shouting above distracted her, and a few moments later she was surrounded by her old friends, the goats, who leaped about her as eagerly as ever, bleating for joy. Peter pushed his way through them and handed her a letter.
‘Here you are,’ he said, with no other explanation.
‘Did you find a letter for me up on the pasture?’ she inquired in surprise.
‘No.’
‘Where did you get it, then?’
‘Out of my satchel.’
The fact was that the postman in Dörfli had given him the letter the evening before, and he had put it in his empty bag. In the morning his bread and cheese had gone in on top of it, and he had forgotten about it when he called at the hut that morning for Uncle’s two goats. He only found it when he was shaking out the last crumbs of food at dinner time. Heidi looked at the envelope carefully, and then ran to her grandfather.
‘Look,’ she cried, ‘I’ve got a letter from Clara. Shall I read it aloud?’
He at once prepared himself to listen, and Peter, who also wanted to hear it, propped himself up against the door post, as he found it easier to attend in that position.
‘Dear Heidi,
‘We are all packed up and hope to leave in two or three days — as soon as Father is ready — though he is not coming with us. He has to go to Paris. Dr Classen comes every day and keeps telling us to hurry up and get off. He is really impatient for us to start. He enjoyed the happy days he spent with you and your grandfather, and during the winter, when he came to see me so often, he used to tell me about them, and how peaceful it was up where you live. He used to say no one could help getting well in that wonderful mountain air, and he has certainly been much better since he came back, and Father says he looks younger than he has done for a long time.
‘You can’t think how much I am looking forward to being with you and seeing everything, and meeting Peter and the goats. We have to go to Ragaz first for me to have some treatment, and I shall be there about six weeks. Then we shall come to Dörfli, and on every fine day I shall be brought up to the hut. Grandmamma will be with me, and is looking forward to seeing you. But Miss Rottenmeier won’t come! Grandmamma keeps saying to her, “Now what about this trip to Switzerland, my good Rottenmeier? You must not hesitate to say if you would like to come with us.” But she always declines very politely and says she doesn’t wish to intrude. But the real reason is that when Sebastian got back from taking you to Dörfli, he told such awful stories about the mountains, fearful peaks and ravines and gorges, overhanging rocks, and mountain slopes so steep that anyone trying to climb them would almost fall over backwards. They might be all right for goats, he said, but certainly not for people! So Miss Rottenmeier is not at all keen on going to Switzerland. Tinette too is afraid to come. So it will be just Grandmamma and me, though Sebastian is to come with us as far as Ragaz, and then go home again.
When Heidi came to the end of the letter, Peter leapt away from the wall and began to swish his stick in the air furiously. The goats were so frightened that they bounded down the mountain at a great rate, and Peter went after them brandishing the stick as though he were challenging someone unseen. The prospect of more visitors from Frankfurt had made him very angry indeed.
Heidi, on the contrary, was overjoyed and felt she must go down next day and tell Grannie all about it. She was sure to be interested in who was coming and, almost more important, who was not, for the old woman knew all the members of the Sesemann household very well now by hearsay.
Now that the weather was so fine, she could go alone, and set out early the following afternoon. It was delightful to go running down the mountainside in the bright sunshine, with the wind at her back, and she was soon there. Grannie was back in her usual corner, spinning, but she looked sad and worried. Peter had come home the evening before in such a bad temper, and had told them that so many people were coming from Frankfurt to visit Heidi, and he didn’t know what might happen after that. All night Grannie had lain awake worrying about it. Heidi went at once to the little stool which was always kept ready for her, and began to tell her great news, getting more and more excited as she talked about it. Then all of a sudden she stopped short in the middle of a sentence, and asked: