HEIDI
to show her all those kindly attentions with which he had been once so familiar.
The sky spread blue and cloudless over the hut and the fir trees and far above over the high rocks, the gray summits of which glistened in the sun. Clara could not feast her eyes enough on all the beauty around her.
“Oh, Heidi, if only I could walk about with you,” she said longingly, “if I could but go and look at the fir trees and at everything I know so well from your description, although I have never been here before.”
Heidi in response put out all her strength, and after a slight effort, managed to wheel Clara’s chair quite easily round the hut to the fir trees. There they paused. Clara had never seen such trees before, with their tall, straight stems, and long thick branches growing thicker and thicker till they touched the ground. Even the grandmamma, who had followed the children, was astonished at the sight of them. She hardly knew what to admire most in these ancient trees: the lofty tops rising in their full green splendor towards the sky, or the pillar-like stems, with their straight and gigantic boughs, that spoke of such antiquity of age, of such long years during which they had looked down upon the valley below, where men came and went, and all things were continually changing, while they stood undisturbed and changeless.
Heidi had now wheeled Clara on to the goat shed, and had flung open the door, so that Clara might have a full view of all that was inside. There was not much to see just now as its indwellers were absent. Clara lamented to her grandmother that they would have to leave early before the goats came
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