HEIDI
to go to-day, or perhaps any other day. I shall have to go home, I suppose, if I have no chair. Oh, I am so sorry, I am so sorry!”
But Heidi looked towards her grandfather with her usual expression of confidence.
“Grandfather, you will be able to do something, won’t you, so that it need not be as Clara says, and so that she is not obliged to go home?”
“Well, for the present we will go up the mountain as we had arranged, and then later on we will see what can be done,” he answered, much to the children’s delight.
He went indoors, fetched out a pile of shawls, and laying them on the sunniest spot he could find set Clara down upon them. Then he fetched the children’s morning milk and had out his two goats.
“Why is Peter not here yet?” thought Uncle to himself, for Peter’s whistle had not been sounded that morning. The grandfather now took Clara up on one arm, and the shawls on the other.
“Now then we will start,” he said; “the goats can come with us.”
Heidi was pleased at this and walked on after her grandfather with an arm over either of the goats’ necks, and the animals were so overjoyed to have her again that they nearly squeezed her flat between them out of sheer affection. When they reached the spot where the goats usually pastured they were surprised to find them already feeding there, climbing about the rocks, and Peter with them, lying his full length on the ground.
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