“Oh, grandmama, do you think I can ever go up there?” Clara asked with a wild longing in her eyes. “If I could only walk with you, Heidi, and climb round everywhere!”
“I’ll push you!” Heidi said for comfort. To show how easy it was, she pushed the chair at such a rate that it would have tumbled down the mountain, if the grandfather had not stopped it at the last moment.
It was time for dinner now. The table was spread near the bench, and soon everybody sat down. The grandmother was so overcome by the view and the delicious wind that fanned her cheek that she remarked: “What a wondrous place this is! I have never seen its like! But what do I see?” she continued. “I think you are actually eating your second piece of cheese, Clara?”
“Oh grandmama, it tastes better than all the things we get in Ragatz,” replied the child, eagerly eating the savory dish.
“Don’t stop, our mountain wind helps along where the cooking is faulty!” contentedly said the old man.
During the meal the uncle and the grandmama had soon got into a lively conversation. They seemed to agree on many things, and understood each other like old friends. A little later the grandmama looked over to the west.
“We must soon start, Clara, for the sun is already low; our guides will be here shortly.”
Clara’s face had become sad, and she entreated: “Oh, please let us stay here another hour or so. We haven’t even seen the hut yet. I wish the day were twice as long.”
The grandmama assented to Clara’s wish to go inside. When the rolling-chair was found too broad for the door, the uncle quietly lifted Clara in his strong arms and carried her in. Grandmama was eagerly looking about her, glad to see everything so neat. Then going up the little ladder to the hayloft, she discovered Heidi’s bed. “Is that your bed, Heidi? What a delicious perfume! It must be a healthy place to sleep,” she said, looking out through the window. The grandfather, with Clara, was coming up, too, with Heidi following.
Clara was perfectly entranced. “What a lovely place to sleep! Oh, Heidi, you can look right up to the sky from your bed. What a good smell! You can hear the fir-trees roar here, can’t you? Oh, I never saw a more delightful bedroom!”
The uncle, looking at the old lady, said now: “I have an idea that it would give Clara new strength to stay up here with us a little while. Of course, I only mean if you did not object. You have brought so many wraps that we can easily make a soft bed for Clara here. My dear lady, you can easily leave the care to me. I’ll undertake it gladly.”
The children screamed for joy, and grandmama’s face was beaming.
“What a fine man you are!” she burst out. “I was just thinking myself that a stay here would strengthen the child, but then I thought of the care and trouble for you. And now you have offered to do it, as if it was nothing at all. How can I thank you enough, uncle?”
After shaking hands many times, the two prepared Clara’s bed, which, thanks to the old lady’s precautions, was soon so soft that the hay could not be felt through at all.
The uncle had carried his new patient back to her rolling-chair, and there they found her sitting, with Heidi beside her. They were eagerly talking of their plans for the coming weeks. When they were told that Clara might stay for a month or so, their faces beamed more than ever.
The guide, with the horse, and the carriers of the chair, now appeared, but the last two were not needed any more and could be sent away.
When the grandmother got ready to leave, Clara called gaily to her: “Oh grandmama, it won’t be long, for you must often come and see us.”
While the uncle was leading the horse down the steep incline, the grandmama told him that she would go back to Ragatz, for the Dörfli was too lonely for her. She also promised to come back from time to time.
Before the grandfather had returned, Peter came racing down to the hut with all his goats. Seeing Heidi, they ran up to her in haste, and so Clara made the acquaintance of Schwänli and Bärli and all the others.
Peter, however, kept away, only sending furious looks at the two girls. When they bade him good night, he only ran away, beating the air with his stick.
The end of the joyous day had come. The two children were both lying in their beds.
“Oh, Heidi!” Clara exclaimed, “I can see so many glittering stars, and I feel as if we were driving in a high carriage straight into the sky.”
“Yes, and do you know why the stars twinkle so merrily?” inquired Heidi.
“No, but tell me.”
“Because they know that God in heaven looks after us mortals and we never need to fear. See, they twinkle and show us how to be merry, too. But Clara, we must not forget to pray to God and ask Him to think of us and keep us safe.”
Sitting up in bed, they then said their evening prayer. As soon as Heidi lay down, she fell asleep. But Clara could not sleep quite yet, it was too wonderful to see the stars from her bed.
In truth she had never seen them before, because in Frankfurt all the blinds were always down long before the stars came out, and at night she had never been outside the house. She could hardly keep her eyes shut, and had to open them again and again to watch the twinkling, glistening stars, till her eyes closed at last and she saw two big, glittering stars in her dream.
XXI
Of Further Events on the Alp
The sun was just
