For some time Grannie tried in vain to comfort her. Heidi hardly ever cried, but when she did it was always difficult to make her stop. The old woman got quite worried and at last she said, ‘Come here, my dear, and listen to me. I can’t see, but I can hear, and when one is blind, it is so good to hear a friendly voice, and yours I love already. Come and sit beside me and tell me what you and Grandfather do up on the mountain. I used to know him well, but I haven’t heard anything of him for years, except what Peter tells us — and that’s not much.’
Heidi dried her tears. She saw a ray of hope. ‘Just wait till I tell Grandfather about you. He’ll be able to make you see, and he’ll mend the hut too. He can do anything.’
Grannie did not contradict her, and Heidi began to chatter away telling everything she did up there, both in summer and in winter. She told how clever Grandfather was at making things, how he had made stools and chairs and new mangers for the goats, and even a bath tub, and a milk bowl, yes, and spoons — all out of wood. Grannie understood from her voice how eagerly she must have watched him at work.
‘I’d like to be able to make things like that myself one day,’ Heidi ended up.
‘Did you hear that, Bridget?’ Grannie asked her daughter. ‘Fancy Uncle doing all that!’
Suddenly the outer door banged and Peter burst into the room. He pulled up short and stared when he saw Heidi, then gave a very friendly grin as she greeted him.
‘What, back from school already?’ asked Grannie. ‘It’s years since I’ve known an afternoon pass so quickly. Well Peterkin, how are you getting on with your reading?’
‘Just the same,’ he replied.
‘Oh dear,’ she sighed, ‘I hoped you might have something different to tell me by now. You’ll be twelve in February.’
‘What to tell you? What do you mean?’ asked Heidi, all interest.
‘Only that perhaps he’d learned to read at last. There’s an old prayer book up on the shelf, with some beautiful hymns in it. I haven’t heard them for a very long time and can’t repeat them any more to myself. I keep hoping Peterkin will be able to read them to me. But he doesn’t seem able to learn. It’s too difficult for him.’
‘I think I must light the lamp,’ said Bridget, who had been darning all this while. ‘The afternoon has passed so quickly I hadn’t noticed it was getting dark.’
Heidi jumped up at that. ‘If it’s getting dark I must go,’ she cried. ‘Goodbye, Grannie.’ She said goodbye to the others and was just leaving when Grannie called anxiously, ‘Wait a minute, Heidi, you can’t go alone. Peter will come with you and see you don’t fall. And don’t stand about and let her get cold. Has she something warm to put on?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Heidi called back, ‘but I shan’t be cold,’ and she ran off so fast that Peter could hardly keep pace with her.
‘Bridget, take my shawl and run after her,’ cried Grannie in distress, ‘she’ll freeze to death in this bitter cold,’ and Bridget took it and went after them. But the children had only gone a very little way up the mountain when they saw Uncle Alp striding towards them, and almost at once they were together.
‘Good girl, you did as you were told,’ he said. Then he wrapped her in the sack again, picked her up in his arms, and turned for home. Bridget was just in time to see what happened, and she went back indoors with Peter to describe the surprising sight to her mother.
‘Thank God the child is all right,’ exclaimed the old woman. ‘I hope Uncle Alp will let her come to see me again. Her visit has done me a deal of good. What a kind heart the little one has and how pleasantly she chatters.’ Grannie was in very good spirits. ‘I hope she comes again,’ she said several times that evening, ‘it would be something to look forward to.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Bridget each time, while Peter grinned broadly, and said, ‘Told you so.’
And out on the mountain Heidi was chattering away inside the sack to her grandfather, though he couldn’t hear a word through its eightfold thickness.
‘Wait till we’re home and then tell me,’ he said.
As soon as they were indoors and Heidi had been unwrapped she began, ‘Tomorrow we must take a hammer and some big nails down to Peter’s house, so that you can mend Grannie’s shutter and lots of other things too, because her whole house creaks and rattles.’
‘Oh, we must, must we? Who told you to say that?’
‘Nobody told me. I just know. The shutters and doors and things are all loose and bang about, and then Grannie gets very frightened and can’t sleep. She’s afraid the house will fall down on top of them. And she can’t see, and she says no one can make her better, but I’m sure you can, Grandfather. Fancy not being able to see, and being frightened too! We’ll go and help her tomorrow, won’t we?’ She was clinging to the old man and looked up at him confidently. He gazed back for a moment and then said, ‘Well, we can at least stop the banging and we’ll do that tomorrow.’
Heidi was delighted and went skipping round the hut, chanting, ‘We’ll do it tomorrow! We’ll do it tomorrow!’
Uncle Alp kept his promise. On the following afternoon they went down on the sledge again and Heidi was set down outside the cottage. ‘Go in now,’ he said, as before, ‘but come away when it begins to get dark.’ Then he laid Heidi’s sack on the sledge and disappeared round the side of the building.
Heidi had hardly set foot inside the door before Grannie called out from her corner, ‘Here she comes again!’ She stopped spinning and held out both hands. Heidi ran to her and pulled up a little stool beside her, sat down and began to chatter away. Suddenly there came a series of loud bangs on the wall which so startled Grannie that she almost knocked her spinning‐wheel over.
‘This time the place is really falling down,’ she cried tremulously. Heidi took hold of her arm and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Grannie. That’s only Grandfather with his hammer. He’s mending everything so that you won’t be frightened any more.’
‘Is it true? God has not forgotten us after all. Can you hear it, Bridget? It really does sound like a hammer. Go out and see who it is, and if it’s Uncle Alp ask him to come in so that I can thank him.’
It was Uncle Alp of course. Bridget found him nailing a wedge‐shaped piece of wood on to the wall. ‘Good day, Uncle,’ she said. ‘Mother and I are grateful to you for helping us like this, and Mother would like to thank you herself if you’ll step inside. I’m sure no one else would have done as much for us and we won’t forget it…’
But he interrupted her roughly. ‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘I know quite well what you really think of me. Go indoors. I can see for myself what wants doing.’ Bridget turned away, not liking to disobey him, and he went on hammering away all round the walls. Then he climbed up on to the roof and mended some holes there, till he had used up all the nails he had brought with him. By this time it was growing dark, and he took the sledge out of the goat‐stall where he had left it, just as Heidi came to find him. He wrapped her up and carried her as he had done the evening before, though he had also to drag the sledge behind him. He knew it would not be safe for her to ride up on it without him beside her, for the wind would soon have blown the coverings away and she would have been frozen.
So he pulled it after him with one hand, holding Heidi safe and warm in the other arm.
So the winter went on. Poor, blind Grannie was happy again after many sad, dark years, for now she always had something pleasant to look forward to. Every day she listened for Heidi’s light step and when the door opened and the little girl came in, she always said, ‘Praise be, here she is again.’ Then Heidi would sit down and chatter merrily away. These hours passed so quickly that Grannie never once had to ask Bridget, ‘Isn’t the day nearly over?’ Instead, after Heidi had left, she often remarked, ‘Wasn’t that a short afternoon?’ and Bridget would agree that it seemed no time since she had cleared away after dinner.