HEIDI
He found Fräulein Rottenmeier in the dining-room superintending the preparation for his meal, and when he had taken his place she sat down opposite to him, looking the very embodiment of bad news, so that he turned to her and said, “What am I to expect, Fräulein Rottenmeier? You greet me with an expression of countenance that quite frightens me. What is the matter? Clara seems cheerful enough.”
“Herr Sesemann,” began the lady in a solemn voice, “it is a matter which concerns Clara; we have been frightfully imposed upon.”
“Indeed, in what way?” asked Herr Sesemann as he went on calmly drinking his wine.
“We had decided, as you remember, to get a companion for Clara, and as I knew how anxious you were to have only those who were well behaved and nicely brought up about her, I thought I would look for a little Swiss girl, as I hoped to find such a one as I have often read about, who, born as it were of the mountain air, lives and moves without touching the earth.”
“Still I think even a Swiss child would have to touch the earth if she wanted to go anywhere,” remarked Herr Sesemann, “otherwise they would have been given wings instead of feet.”
“Ah, Herr Sesemann, you know what I mean,” continued Fräulein Rottenmeier. “I mean one so at home among the living creatures of the high, pure mountain regions, that she would be like some idealistic being from another world among us.”
“And what could Clara do with such an idealistic being as you describe, Fräulein Rottenmeier?”
[150]
