Johanna Spyri: Heidi E-Book

Johanna Spyri

• Herausgeber: SK Digital Classics
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 450

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

High in the Swiss Alps, young orphan Heidi brings joy and wonder to everyone she meets. From her gruff grandfather and the goatherd Peter to a blind grandmother and a wealthy family in Frankfurt, her innocent spirit transforms the lives around her. This complete edition of Johanna Spyri's beloved classic features both volumes - "Heidi's Years of Learning and Traveling" and "Heidi Can Use What She Has Learned" - in a new translation that captures all the warmth of these timeless Alpine adventures.

Leseprobe

Johanna Spyri

Heidi

A New Translation of the Complete Volumes 1 and 2

Copyright © 2025 by Novelaris Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

ISBN: 978-3-68931-211-4

Contents

FIRST VOLUME: HEIDI’S YEARS OF LEARNING AND TRAVELING

Up to the Alm-Öhi

At the grandfather’s

In the pasture

With the grandmother

A visit comes and then another one with more consequences

A new chapter and lots of new things

Miss Rottenmeier is having a restless day

Things are restless at the Sesemann house

The master of the house hears all sorts of things in his house that he has not yet heard

A grandmother

Heidi gains in one way and loses in another

The Sesemann house is haunted

Up the mountain pasture on a summer evening

On Sunday, when the bell rings

SECOND VOLUME: HEIDI CAN USE WHAT SHE HAS LEARNED

Travel accessories

A guest on the mountain pasture

A retaliation

Winter in the village

Winter continues

The distant friends stir

What happens on the alp

What nobody expected happens

It’s time to say goodbye, but not forever

Cover

Table of Contents

Text

FIRST VOLUME: HEIDI’S YEARS OF LEARNING AND TRAVELING

Up to the Alm-Öhi

From the friendly village of Maienfeld, a footpath leads through green, tree-filled meadows to the foot of the heights, which look down on the valley from this side, tall and serious. Where the footpath begins, heathland with its short grass and strong mountain herbs soon begins to smell of what is to come, as the footpath climbs steeply and directly up to the Alps.

A tall, strong-looking girl climbed up this narrow mountain path on a bright, sunny June morning, leading a child by the hand whose cheeks were so glowing that even the child’s sunburnt, completely brown skin was flaming red. It was no wonder: despite the hot June sun, the child was wrapped up as if it had to fend off a bitter frost. The little girl must have been barely five years old, but it was impossible to tell what her natural shape was, for she had obviously put on two, if not three, dresses, one on top of the other, and tied a large red cotton shawl around and around her, so that the little person was a completely shapeless figure, tucked into two heavy, nail-studded mountain boots, working her way hot and laboriously up the mountain. They must have climbed for an hour from the valley when they came to the hamlet halfway up the mountain pasture called ‘im Dörfli’. Here the hikers were called from almost every house, once from a window, once from a front door and once from the path, for the girl had reached her home village. However, she did not stop anywhere, but returned all the greetings and questions called to her as she passed by, without standing still, until she reached the last of the scattered little houses at the end of the hamlet. Here she called out from a door: “Wait a moment, Dete, I’ll come with you if you go further up.”

The woman she was addressing stood still; the child immediately pulled away from her hand and sat down on the floor.

“Are you tired, Heidi?” asked the companion.

“No, I’m hot,” replied the child.

“We’re almost at the top now, you just have to make a little effort and take big steps, then we’ll be up there in an hour,” encouraged the companion.

Now a broad, good-natured-looking woman stepped out of the door and joined them. The child had got up and now wandered after the two old acquaintances, who immediately got into a lively conversation about all the inhabitants of the ‘Dörfli’ and many of the surrounding dwellings.

“But where do you want to take the child, Dete?” asked the new arrival. “It will probably be your sister’s child, the one she left behind.”

“That’s it,” replied Dete, “I want to take it up to the Öhi, it has to stay there.”

“What, you want the child to stay with the Alm-Öhi? I don’t think you’re in your right mind, Dete! How can you do such a thing! The old man will send you home with your plan!”

“He can’t, he’s the grandfather, he has to do something, I’ve had the child until now, and I can tell you that, Barbel, I won’t leave a place like the one I have now for the sake of the child; now the grandfather should do his part.”

“Yes, if he were like other people, he would,” little Barbel confirmed eagerly; “but you know him. What will he do with a child and such a small one at that! He can’t stand it with him! But where are you going?”

“To Frankfurt,” Dete explained, “I’m getting extra service there. The mistress was already down in the baths last summer, I had her rooms in my corridor and got them, and even then they wanted to take me with them, but I couldn’t get away, and now they’re here again and want to take me with them, and I want to go too, you can be sure of that.”

“I don’t want to be the child!” Barbel exclaimed with a defensive gesture. “Nobody knows what’s going on with the old man up there! He doesn’t want to have anything to do with anyone, he doesn’t set foot in a church year in, year out, and when he comes down with his big stick once a year, everyone avoids him and has to be afraid of him. With his thick gray eyebrows and terrible beard, he also looks like an old heathen and Indian, so you’re glad if you don’t meet him alone.”

“Even if,” said Dete defiantly, “he is the grandfather and has to look after the child, he probably won’t hurt him, otherwise it’s his fault, not mine.”

“I just want to know,” said Barbel inquiringly, “what’s on the old man’s conscience that he makes such eyes and stays up there on the mountain pasture all alone and hardly ever shows his face. They say all sorts of things about him; surely you know something about it from your sister, don’t you, Dete?”

“Of course, but I don’t talk; if he heard me, I’d be well received!”

But Barbel would have liked to know for a long time how it was with the Alm-Öhi, that he looked so misanthropic and lived up there all alone and that people always spoke of him with half words, as if they were afraid to be against him and yet didn’t want to be for him. Nor did Barbel know why the old man was called the Alm-Öhi by everyone in the village, he couldn’t be the real uncle of all the inhabitants; but since everyone called him that, she did and never called the old man anything other than Öhi, which is the local pronunciation for uncle. Barbel had only recently married her way up to the Dörfli, having previously lived down in Prättigau, so she was not yet fully acquainted with all the experiences and special personalities of the Dörfli and the surrounding area. Dete, her good friend, on the other hand, was a native of the Dörfli and had lived there with her mother until a year ago, when she had died and Dete had moved over to Bade Ragaz, where she found a good job as a chambermaid in the large hotel. She had also come from Ragaz that morning with the child; she had been able to travel as far as Maienfeld on a hay cart, on which an acquaintance of hers drove home and took her and the child with him. - So this time Barbel did not want to let the good opportunity to hear something pass her by unused; she took Dete by the arm in confidence and said, “I can hear from you what is true and what people say about it; I think you know the whole story. Now tell me a little about the old man, and whether he was always so feared and such a man-hater.”

“I don’t think I can know for sure whether he was always like that, I’m twenty-six now and he’s certainly seventy years old; I didn’t see him like that when he was young, you wouldn’t expect that. But if I knew that it wouldn’t get around the whole Prättigau afterwards, I could tell you all sorts of things about him; my mother was from Domleschg and so was he.”

“A bah, Dete, what do you mean?” returned Barbel, a little offended; “I’m not so strict about gossiping in Prättigau, and then I can keep something to myself if I have to. Tell me now, you needn’t regret it.”

“Yes, that’s how I want it, but keep your word!” the detective warned. But first she looked around to see if the child wasn’t too close and would listen to everything she wanted to say; but the child was nowhere to be seen, it must have stopped following the two companions some time ago, but they hadn’t noticed it in the heat of the conversation. Dete stood still and looked all around. The footpath made a few bends, but you could almost see it all the way down to the village, but no one was visible on it.

“Now I see it,” explained the Barbel; “do you see there?” and she pointed with her index finger far away from the mountain path. “It’s climbing up the slopes with Geißenpeter and his goats. Why is he going up so late today with his animals? But it’s just as well, he can see the child now, and you can tell me all the better.”

“Peter doesn’t have to make an effort to look after himself,” the detective remarked; “he’s not stupid for his five years, he opens his eyes and sees what’s going on, I’ve already noticed that about him, and he’ll benefit from it one day, because the old man has nothing left but his two goats and the mountain hut.”

“Has he had any more?” asked the Barbel.

“Him? Yes, I think he had more,” replied Dete eagerly; “he had one of the most beautiful farms in Domleschg. He was the elder son and had only one brother, who was quiet and orderly. But the older one wanted to do nothing but play the master and travel around the country and have to deal with bad people that nobody knew. He gambled away the whole farm and consumed it, and when it came out, his father and mother died one after the other out of sheer grief, and his brother, who was now also on the begging stick, went out into the world in frustration, no one knows where, and the Öhi himself, when he had nothing left but a bad name, also disappeared. At first nobody knew where, then it was said that he had joined the army in Naples, and then nothing more was heard of him for twelve or fifteen years. Then, all of a sudden, he reappeared in Domleschg with a half-grown boy and wanted to find a place for him with his relatives. But all the doors were closed to him and nobody wanted to know anything more about him. This made him very bitter; he said he wouldn’t set foot in Domleschg again, and then he came here to the village and lived there with the boy. The woman must have been a Grisons woman whom he had met down there and then soon lost again. He must have had some money, because he had the boy, Tobias, learn a trade, carpentry, and he was a decent man and well-liked by everyone in the village. But nobody trusted the old man, they said he had deserted from Naples, otherwise he would have had a bad time, because he had killed someone, not in the war of course, you understand, but in a brawl. But we recognized the relationship because my mother’s grandmother had been a sibling of his grandmother. So we called him Öhi, and as we were related to almost everyone in the village from our father, they all called him Öhi too, and since he had moved up to the mountain pasture, he was just called ‘Alm-Öhi’.”

“But how did it go with Tobias then?” asked Barbel eagerly.

“Just wait, it’ll come, I can’t say everything at once,” explained Dete. “So Tobias was doing his apprenticeship out in Mels, and as soon as he was finished, he came home to the village and took my sister Adelheid as his wife, because they had always liked each other, and now that they were married, they were very good together. But it didn’t last long. Just two years later, while he was helping to build a house, a beam fell on him and struck him dead. And when the man was brought home so disfigured, Adelheid fell into a violent fever from fright and suffering and was unable to recover; she was not usually very strong and sometimes had such a condition of her own that it was hard to tell whether she was asleep or awake. Only a few weeks after Tobias died, Adelheid was also buried. Then all the people far and wide spoke of the sad fate of the two, and quietly and loudly they said that this was the punishment that Öhi deserved for his godless life, and he himself was told and the priest also spoke into his conscience that he should now do penance, but he only became more and more grim and stubborn and no longer spoke to anyone, and everyone avoided him. Suddenly it was said that Öhi had gone up to the mountain pasture and never came down again, and he has been there ever since, living in discord with God and man. We took Adelheid’s little child with us, the mother and I; it was one year old. When her mother died last summer and I wanted to earn some money in the baths down below, I took her with me and gave her to old Ursel up in Pfäfferserdorf. I was able to stay in the baths in winter too, there was all kinds of work because I know how to sew and mend, and early in spring the lady from Frankfurt came back, whom I had served last year and who wants to take me with her; we leave the day after tomorrow, and the service is good, I can tell you that.”

“And you’re going to give the child to that old man up there? I’m just wondering what you’re thinking, Dete,” said the Barbel reproachfully.

“What do you mean?” Dete replied. “I’ve done my bit for the child, and what should I do with him? I don’t think I can take a child who is only five years old to Frankfurt. But where are you actually going, Barbel, we’re already halfway to the mountain pasture?”

“I’ll be right where I need to be,” replied the Barbel; “I’ve got to talk to the goat-peeper, she’s spinning me in winter. So farewell, Dete, with luck!”

Dete held out his hand to his companion and stood still as she walked towards the small, dark brown alpine hut, which stood a few steps to the side of the path in a hollow where it was fairly sheltered from the mountain wind. The hut stood halfway up the mountain pasture from the Dörfli, and it was a good thing that it was in a small hollow in the mountain, because it looked so dilapidated and dilapidating that it must have been a dangerous place to live in when the foehn wind blew so powerfully over the mountains that everything about the hut rattled, doors and windows, and all the rotten beams shook and cracked. If the hut had been up on the mountain pasture on such days, it would have been blown down into the valley immediately.

Here lived the “Geißenpeter”, the eleven-year-old boy who fetched the goats every morning down in the village to drive them up to the mountain pasture to let them eat the short, strong herbs until the evening; then Peter jumped down again with the light-footed animals, gave a shrill whistle through his fingers when he arrived in the village, and every owner fetched his goat on the square. Mostly little boys and girls came, because the peaceful goats were not to be feared, and that was the only time during the day all summer that Peter spent with his own kind; otherwise he only lived with the goats. He had his mother and his blind grandmother at home, but as he always had to leave very early in the morning and came home late in the evening from the village, because he had to talk to the children for as long as possible, he only spent just enough time at home to gulp down his milk and bread in the morning and the same in the evening, and then to lie down and sleep. His father, who had also been called Geißenpeter because he had worked in the same profession in earlier years, had had an accident a few years ago while felling wood. His mother, whose name was Brigitte, was called the Geißenpeterin by everyone for the sake of context, and the blind grandmother was known far and wide to young and old only by the name Grandmother.

The detective had waited about ten minutes and looked around on all sides to see if the children with the goats were still nowhere to be seen; but when this was not the case, she climbed a little higher, where she could better see the whole pasture down to the bottom, and now looked from here to here and there with signs of great impatience on her face and in her movements. In the meantime the children approached by a long detour, for Peter knew many places where there was all sorts of good things for his goats to gnaw on bushes and shrubs; so he made many turns along the way with his herd. First the child climbed up with difficulty, panting in his heavy armor from the heat and discomfort and exhausting all his strength. He didn’t say a word, but gazed unblinkingly at Peter, who was jumping back and forth with his bare feet and light panties without any effort, and then at the goats, whose thin, slender legs made it even easier to climb over bushes and stones and up steep slopes. Suddenly the child sat down on the ground, took off his shoes and stockings with great speed, stood up again, pulled off his thick red scarf, undid his little skirt, took it off quickly and immediately had another one to crochet out, because Base Dete had dressed him in the Sunday dress over his everyday clothes for the sake of brevity, so that nobody would have to wear it. The everyday skirt was gone in a flash, and now the child was standing in a light petticoat, her bare arms stretching merrily into the air from her short shirt sleeves. Then she put everything in a heap, and now she jumped and climbed after the goats and beside Peter, as lightly as only one of the whole company. Peter had not been careful what the child did when it was left behind. As he came skipping along in his new clothes, he pulled his whole face apart, grinning merrily, and looked back, and when he saw the heap of clothes lying below, his face parted a little more, and his mouth went almost from ear to ear; but he said nothing. As the child now felt so free and light, he began a conversation with Peter, and he also began to talk, and had to answer many questions, for the child wanted to know how many goats he had, and where he was going with them, and what he was doing where he was going. So at last the children and the goats arrived at the top of the hut and came to see Base Dete. But she had hardly seen the approaching company when she cried out: “Heidi, what are you doing? What do you look like? Where’s your skirt and the second one and your scarf? And I bought you brand new shoes for the mountain and made you new stockings, and it’s all gone! Everything gone! Heidi, what are you doing, where have you put everything?”

The child calmly pointed down the mountain and said: “There!” The base followed his finger. Right, something was lying there and there was a red dot on top, which had to be the scarf.

“You wretch!” cried the base in great excitement. “Why did you take everything off? What’s that supposed to be?”

“I don’t need it,” said the child, not looking at all remorseful about what he had done.

“Oh, you unfortunate, senseless Heidi, haven’t you got any ideas yet?” the base continued to moan and scold her. “Who should go down there again, it’s half an hour! Come on, Peter, you run back quickly and get the stuff, come quickly and don’t stand there staring at me as if you were nailed to the floor.”

“I’m already too late,” Peter said slowly and, without moving, remained standing in the same spot from which he had listened to the base’s outburst of terror with both hands in his pockets.

“You’re just standing there, opening your eyes, and I don’t think you’ll get far that way!” Base Dete called out to him. “Come here, you must have something nice, see?” She held out a new fiver, which shone in his eyes. Suddenly he jumped up and away on the straightest path down the mountain pasture and arrived at the pile of clothes in no time at all, picked them up and appeared with them so quickly that the base had to praise him and immediately handed him his five-rappen piece. Peter quickly put it deep into his pocket, and his face shone and laughed broadly, for such a treasure was not often bestowed upon him.

“You can still carry the stuff up to the Öhi, you’re walking the path too,” said Base Dete now, preparing to climb the steep slope that rose up just behind Geißenpeter’s hut. He willingly took on the task and followed the woman on foot, his left arm wrapped around his bundle and his right hand swinging the goat’s rod. Heidi and the goats hopped and jumped happily alongside him. After three quarters of an hour, the procession reached the top of the mountain pasture, where old Öhi’s hut stood free on the ledge of the mountain, exposed to all winds, but also accessible to every view of the sun and with a full view far down into the valley. Behind the hut stood three old fir trees with thick, long, untrimmed branches. Further back, the path climbed again up to the old, gray rocks, first over beautiful, herb-rich heights, then into stony undergrowth and finally up to the bare, steep rocks.

The Öhi had built himself a bench on the side of the hut facing the valley. Here he sat, a pipe in his mouth, both hands on his knees, and watched calmly as the children, the goats and Base Dete climbed up, for the latter had gradually been overtaken by the others. Heidi was up first; she went straight up to the old man, held out her hand and said, “Good evening, Grandpa!”

“So, so, what do you mean?” the old man asked gruffly, shook the child’s hand briefly and looked at her with a long, penetrating gaze from under his bushy eyebrows. Heidi returned the long look persistently, without blinking her eyes once, because the grandfather with his long beard and thick, gray eyebrows, which had grown together in the middle and looked like a kind of shrubbery, was so astonishing to look at that Heidi had to look at him. In the meantime, the base had also approached, along with Peter, who stood quietly for a while and watched what was happening.

“I bid you good day, Öhi,” said the detective, stepping forward, “and here I bring you the child of Tobias and Adelheid. You probably won’t know him anymore, because you’ve never seen him since he was a year old.”

“So, what does the child have to do with me?” the old man asked briefly; “and you there,” he called to Peter, “you can go with your goats, you’re not too early; take mine with you!”

Peter obeyed immediately and disappeared, because the Öhi had looked at him and realized that he had already had enough.

“It’ll just have to stay with you, Öhi,” the detective replied to his question. “I think I’ve done my bit for him over the past four years, so now it will be up to you to do yours for once.”

“So,” said the old man, casting a flashing glance at the Dete. “And if the child starts to run after you and whine, like little unreasonable people do, what do I have to do with him?”

“That’s your affair then,” returned the detective; “I almost think no one told me what to do with the little one when it was in my hands, only a year old, and I had enough to do for myself and the mother. Now I have to earn my living, and you are next to the child; if you can’t have it, do what you like with it, then you’ll have to answer for it if it spoils, and you probably won’t need to add to the burden.”

The detective did not have a very clear conscience about the matter, which is why she had become so heated and had said more than she had intended. At her last words, the Öhi stood up; he looked at her in such a way that she took a few steps back; then he stretched out his arm and said commandingly: “Get back down where you came from and don’t show your face again so soon!” Dete didn’t need to be told twice. “So farewell, and you too, Heidi,” she said quickly and ran down the mountain to the village at a trot, for her inner excitement drove her forward like a powerful steam engine. In the village she was called even more this time, because people were wondering where the child was; they all knew the Dete exactly and knew who the child belonged to and everything that had happened to him. So when all the doors and windows rang out: “Where is the child? Dete, where have you left the child?”, she shouted back with increasing reluctance: “Up at the Alm-Öhi! Well, at the Alm-Öhi, you can hear it!”

But she became so indignant because the women from all sides called out to her: “How can you do such a thing!”, and: “That poor little droplet!”, and: “Leave such a helpless little thing up there!”, and then again and again: “That poor little droplet!” Dete ran on as fast as she could and was glad when she heard nothing more, for she was not feeling well; her mother had handed the child over to her when she was dying. But to reassure herself, she told herself that she could do something for the child again if she earned a lot of money, and so she was very glad that she would soon be far away from all the people who talked to her and would be able to earn a good living.

At the grandfather’s

After the Dete had disappeared, Öhi sat down on the bench again and blew big clouds from his pipe, staring at the ground and not saying a word. Meanwhile, Heidi looked around happily, discovered the goat shed attached to the hut and looked inside. There was nothing inside. The child continued his investigations and came behind the hut to the old fir trees. The wind blew through the branches so strongly that it whistled and roared up in the treetops. Heidi stopped and listened. When it became a little quieter, the child walked around the corner of the hut and came back to her grandfather at the front. When she saw him in the same position as she had left him, she stood in front of him, put her hands behind her back and looked at him. The grandfather looked up. “What do you want to do now?” he asked as the child still stood motionless in front of him.

“I want to see what you have inside, in the hut,” said Heidi.

“Come on,” and the grandfather got up and went into the hut.

“Take your bundle of clothes with you,” he ordered as he walked in.

“I don’t need that anymore,” explained Heidi.

The old man turned and looked piercingly at the child, whose black eyes glowed in anticipation of what might be inside. “He can’t be lacking in sense,” he said half aloud. “Why don’t you need it any more?” he added aloud.

“I want to walk like the goats, they have very light legs.”

“There, you can do that, but get the stuff,” her grandfather ordered, “put it in the box.” Heidi obeyed. Now the old man opened the door and Heidi followed him into a fairly large room, it was the size of the whole hut. There was a table and a chair at it; in one corner was grandfather’s bed, in another was the large kettle hanging over the stove; on the other side was a large door in the wall, which grandfather opened; it was the wardrobe. His clothes were hanging in there and on one rack were a few shirts, stockings and cloths and on another some plates and cups and glasses and on the top one a round loaf of bread and smoked meat and cheese, for the cupboard contained everything that the Alm-Öhi owned and used for his livelihood. As soon as he had opened the cupboard, Heidi quickly approached and pushed his things in, as far behind his grandfather’s clothes as possible, so that they would not be so easy to find again. Now she looked carefully around the room and then said: “Where do I have to sleep, Grandfather?”

“Wherever you want,” he replied.

That was just fine with Heidi. Now he went into every nook and cranny and looked for the best place to sleep. A small ladder had been erected in the corner of Grandfather’s bed; Heidi climbed up and reached the hayloft. There was a fresh, fragrant pile of hay at the top, and through a round hatch you could see far down into the valley.

“I want to sleep here,” Heidi called down, “it’s nice here! Come and see how nice it is here, Grandpa!”

“I know,” it sounded from below.

“I’ll make the bed now,” cried the child again, bustling to and fro upstairs; “but you must come up and bring me a sheet, for a sheet goes on a bed, and one lies on it.”

“Well, well,” said the grandfather downstairs, and after a while he went to the cupboard and rummaged around in it a bit; then he pulled out a long, coarse cloth from under his shirts, which must have been something like a sheet. He came up the ladder with it. A very neat little bed had been made up in the hayloft; the hay was piled high at the top, where the head had to lie, and the face was placed so that it just met the open, round hole.

“That’s well done,” said her grandfather, “now the cloth will come, but wait” - with that he took a good wipe of hay from the pile and made the bed twice as thick so that the hard ground could not be felt through - “so, now come here with it.” Heidi had quickly taken the sheet, but could hardly carry it, it was so heavy; but that was very good, for the sharp stalks of hay could not pierce through the thick stuff. Now the two of them spread the cloth together over the hay, and where it was too wide and too long, Heidi hurriedly stuffed the ends under the bed. Now it looked quite good and clean, and Heidi stood in front of it and looked at it thoughtfully.

“We’ve forgotten something else, Grandpa,” it then said.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A blanket, because when you go to bed, you crawl between the sheet and the blanket.”

“Like that, do you think? But what if I don’t have any?” said the old man.

“Oh, then it’s the same, Grandfather,” Heidi reassured him, “then you take hay for the blanket again,” and he hurriedly wanted to go back to the haystack, but Grandfather refused to let him.

“Wait a moment,” he said, climbed down the ladder and went to his camp. Then he came back and placed a large, heavy, linen sack on the ground.

“Isn’t that better than hay?” he asked. Heidi pulled the sack back and forth with all her might to spread it out, but her little hands couldn’t manage the heavy stuff. Grandfather helped, and as it lay spread out on the bed, everything looked very good and durable, and Heidi stood in front of his new bed in amazement and said, “That’s a magnificent blanket and the whole bed! Now I wish it were already night, so I could lie in it.”

“I think we could eat something first,” said the grandfather, “or what do you think?” Heidi had forgotten everything else in his eagerness to go to bed, but now that the thought of eating had occurred to him, he was very hungry, because he had had nothing today except his piece of bread and a few sips of thin coffee early in the morning, and then he had made the long journey. So Heidi said quite approvingly: “Yes, I mean it too.”

“So go down, if we are agreed,” said the old man, following the child on foot. Then he went to the kettle, pushed the large one away and turned the small one hanging on the chain, sat down on the wooden tripod with the round seat in front of it and blew on a bright fire. It began to boil in the cauldron, and down below the old man held a large piece of cheese over the fire with a long iron fork and turned it back and forth until it was golden yellow on all sides. Heidi had been watching with rapt attention; now something new must have occurred to him; suddenly it jumped away and to the cupboard and from there back and forth. Now the grandfather came to the table with a pot and the roast cheese on his fork; there was already the round loaf of bread on it and two plates and two knives, all nicely arranged, because Heidi had noticed everything in the cupboard and knew that it would all be needed for dinner in a moment.

“That’s right, you should think of something yourself,” said the grandfather, placing the roast on the bread as a base, “but there’s still something missing on the table.”

Heidi saw how invitingly it was steaming out of the pot and quickly jumped back to the cupboard. But there was only one bowl. Heidi was not embarrassed for long, there were two glasses at the back; the child came back immediately and put the bowl and glass on the table.

“That’s right; you know how to help yourself; but where do you want to sit?” Grandfather himself sat on the only chair. Heidi shot over to the stove as quick as an arrow, brought back the little tripod and sat down on it.

“At least you have a seat, that’s true, just a little far down,” said the grandfather; “but my chair would be too short to reach the table; but now you must have something for once, so come!” With that he got up, filled the bowl with milk, put it on the chair and moved it very close to the tripod so that Heidi now had a table in front of her. Grandfather placed a large piece of bread and a piece of the golden cheese on it and said: “Now eat!” He sat down on the corner of the table and began his lunch. Heidi took his bowl and drank and drank without stopping, for all the thirst of his long journey had come back to him. Now he took a long breath - for in the heat of drinking he had not been able to catch his breath for a long time - and put down his bowl.

“Do you like the milk?” asked the grandfather.

“I’ve never drunk such good milk,” Heidi replied.

“So you must have more,” and grandfather filled the little bowl to the top once more, and set it before the child, who bit into her bread with pleasure, after she had spread some of the soft cheese on it, for it was as soft as butter when fried, and tasted quite strong together, and in between she drank her milk and looked very amused. When the meal was over, grandfather went out into the goat pen and had all sorts of things to put in order, and Heidi watched him carefully as he first cleaned with the broom, then laid fresh litter for the animals to sleep on; then he went to the little scoop next door and cut round sticks and chopped at a board and drilled holes in it and then stuck the round sticks in and put them up; suddenly it was a chair like grandfather’s, only much higher, and Heidi marveled at the work, speechless with amazement.

“What’s that, Heidi?” asked the grandfather.

“That’s my chair because it’s so high; all of a sudden it was finished,” said the child, still in deep amazement and admiration.

“It knows what it sees, it has its eyes in the right place,” the grandfather remarked to himself as he walked around the hut, hammering a nail here and a nail there and then fixing something to the door, moving from one place to another with hammer and nails and pieces of wood, always mending or knocking something away, depending on what was needed. Heidi walked behind him step by step and watched him intently, and everything that was going on was very entertaining to watch.

And so the evening approached. It began to rustle more strongly in the old fir trees, a mighty wind blew and roared through the dense treetops. This sounded so beautifully in Heidi’s ears and heart that he became so happy about it that he jumped and skipped around under the fir trees as if he had experienced an unheard-of joy. Grandfather stood under the barn door and watched the child. Now a shrill whistle sounded. Heidi stopped jumping and the grandfather stepped out. Down it came from above, goat after goat, like a hunt, and Peter in the middle of it all. With a shout of joy, Heidi shot into the middle of the herd and greeted the old friends from this morning one by one. When they arrived at the hut, everything stood still, and out of the herd came two beautiful, slender goats, one white and one brown, towards the grandfather and licked his hands, for he was holding a little salt in them, as he did every evening to welcome his two little animals. Peter disappeared with his flock. Heidi tenderly stroked one and then the other of the goats and jumped around to stroke them from the other side, and was very happy and delighted with the little animals. “Are they ours, grandfather? Are they both ours? Will they go into the stable? Will they always stay with us?” Heidi asked one after the other in his amusement, and grandfather could hardly get his constant “Yes, yes!” in between one question and the next. When the goats had licked up their salt, the old man said: “Go and get out your bowl and the bread.”

Heidi obeyed and came right back. Now grandfather milked the bowl full of the white girl and cut off a piece of bread and said, “Now eat and then go upstairs and sleep! Base Dete has left a little bundle for you, there are shirts and things in it, it’s downstairs in the box if you need it; I have to go in with the goats now, so sleep well!”

“Good night, grandfather! Good night - what’s their name, Grandpa, what’s their name?” the child called out and ran after the disappearing old man and the goats.

“The white one is called Schwänli and the brown one is called Bärli,” the grandfather replied.

“Good night, Schwänli, good night, Bärli!” cried Heidi with might and main, for just then they both disappeared into the stable. Now Heidi sat down on the bench and ate his bread and drank his milk; but the strong wind almost blew him off his seat, so he quickly got ready, then went inside and climbed up to his bed, in which he slept as soundly and wonderfully as only one could sleep in the most beautiful prince’s bed. Not long afterward, before it was completely dark, grandfather also lay down on his bed, for in the morning he was always out again with the sun, and it came in very early over the mountains in this summer season. During the night the wind blew so violently that the whole hut shook with its blows and all the beams cracked; the chimney howled and groaned like wailing voices, and in the old fir trees outside it raged with such fury that here and there a branch came crashing down. Grandfather got up in the middle of the night and said half aloud to himself: “It will probably be afraid.” He climbed up the ladder and approached Heidi’s camp. The moon outside shone brightly in the sky, then the chasing clouds passed over it again and everything went dark. Now the moonlight came shining in through the round opening and fell straight onto Heidi’s camp. Heidi’s cheeks were fiery red as she slept under her heavy blanket, and she lay quietly and peacefully on her little round arm, dreaming of something pleasant, for her little face looked quite cheerful. Grandfather looked at the peacefully sleeping child until the moon went behind the clouds again and it became dark, then he returned to his bed.

In the pasture

Heidi woke up early in the morning to a loud whistle, and when he opened his eyes, a golden glow came through the round hole onto his bed and the hay next to it, so that everything around shone golden. Heidi looked around in amazement and didn’t know where it was. But now he heard his grandfather’s deep voice outside, and now everything came back to him: where he had come from and that he was now on the mountain pasture with his grandfather, no longer with old Ursel, who could hardly hear anything and was usually freezing, so that she always sat by the kitchen window or by the stove, where Heidi had to stay or very close by, so that the old woman could see where he was, because she couldn’t hear him. Sometimes it was too cramped for Heidi inside and she would have preferred to run out. So he was very happy when he woke up in his new home and remembered how many new things he had seen yesterday and what he could see again today, especially the little tail and the bear. Heidi jumped out of bed in a hurry and in a few minutes had put back on everything he had worn yesterday, because it was very little. Now he climbed down the ladder and jumped out in front of the hut. Goat Peter was already standing there with his flock, and Grandfather had just brought Schwänli and Bärli from the stable to join the party. Heidi ran to meet him to say hello to him and the goats.

“Do you want to go to the pasture?” asked the grandfather. That was just fine with Heidi, who jumped for joy.

“But first wash and be clean, otherwise the sun will laugh at you when it shines so beautifully up there and sees that you are black; look, it’s ready for you there.” Grandfather pointed to a large tub full of water standing in front of the door in the sun. Heidi jumped in and splashed and rubbed until it was all shiny. Meanwhile, the grandfather went into the hut and called to Peter: “Come here, goat general, and bring your Habersack with you.” Astonished, Peter followed the call and held out his little sack, in which he was carrying his meagre lunch.

“Open up,” the old man ordered and put in a large piece of bread and an equally large piece of cheese. Peter’s round eyes opened as wide as possible in astonishment, because the two pieces were probably twice as big as the two he had inside as his own lunch.

“Now put the bowl in,” continued the Öhi, “because the child can’t drink like you, only away from the goat, it doesn’t know that. You milk him two bowls full for lunch, because the child goes with you and stays with you until you come down again; be careful that he doesn’t fall over the rocks, do you hear?” -

Now Heidi came running in. “Can’t the sun laugh at me now, Granddad?” she asked, looking embarrassed. She had rubbed her face, neck and arms with the coarse cloth that her grandfather had hung up next to the water tub in her terror of the sun, so amazingly that she was standing in front of her grandfather, red as a sheet. He laughed a little.

“No, now she has nothing to laugh about,” he confirmed. “But you know what? In the evening, when you come home, you’ll go all the way into the tub like a fish, because if you walk like a goat, you’ll get black feet. Now you can move out.”

Now we made our merry way up the alp. The wind had blown away the last of the clouds during the night; the sky looked dark blue from all sides, and in the middle of it stood the shining sun, shimmering on the green alp, and all the blue and yellow flowers on it opened their calyxes and looked happily towards it. Heidi jumped here and there and shouted for joy, for there were whole clusters of fine, red celestial keys, and the beautiful gentians were shimmering all blue, and everywhere the delicate, golden cowslips laughed and nodded in the sun. Overjoyed by allshimmering, waving flowers, Heidi even forgot about the geese and about Peter. It jumped all the way over and then onto the side, because it was “bobbing” red and yellow and lured Heidi to all sides. And everywhere Heidi broke open whole flocks of flowers and packed them into his little apron, because he wanted to take them home with him and put them in the hay in his sleeping chamber, so that it would be like out here. - So dep “Peter`had to look at all sides, and his “round eyes, which were not particularly quick in and out, had more work than Peter could cope with, because the goats did it like Heidi: they also ran here and there, and e2 had to whistle and shout and swing his rod to round up all the lost ones again.

“Where are you again, Heidi?” he now called out in a rather grim voice.

“There,” it sounded back from somewhere. No one could see Peter, because Heidi was sitting on the ground behind a small hill densely covered with fragrant pollen; the whole air around her was so full of fragrance that Heidi had never breathed in anything so sweet. She sat down among the flowers and took in the scent to the full.

“Follow me!” Peter called out again. “You don’t have to fall over the rocks, the Öhi has forbidden it.”

“Where are the rocks?” Heidi asked back, but didn’t move from the spot as the sweet scent wafted more sweetly towards the child with every breath of wind.

“Up there, right at the top, we still have a long way to go, so come now! And up at the highest point sits the old bird of prey and croaks.”

That helped. Heidi immediately jumped up and ran towards Peter with his apron full of flowers.

“Now you’ve had enough,” he said as they climbed on together again; “otherwise you’ll always get stuck, and if you take them all, there won’t be any left tomorrow.” The last reason made sense to Heidi, and then she had already filled her apron so full that there was little room left, and there would have to be more tomorrow. So Peter moved on, and the goats all walked more orderly now, for they smelled the good herbs from the high pasture from afar and were now heading there without stopping. The pasture where Peter usually stopped with his goats and set up his quarters for the day lay at the foot of the high rocks, which, at first still covered with bushes and fir trees, finally towered up to the sky, completely bare and rugged. On one side of the mountain pasture, rocky gorges stretch far down and grandfather was right to warn against them. When he reached this high point, Peter took off his sack and placed it carefully in a small depression in the ground, for the wind sometimes came in strong gusts and Peter knew it and did not want to see his precious possessions rolling down the mountain; then he stretched out long and wide on the sunny pasture ground, for he now had to recover from the exertion of the climb.

In the meantime, Heidi had untied his little apron and rolled it up tightly with the flowers in it and placed it in the hollow with the food bag, and now he sat down next to the outstretched Peter and looked around him. The valley lay far below in the full morning glow; before him Heidi saw a great, wide field of snow rising high up into the dark blue sky, and to the left of it stood an immense mass of rock, and on each side of it a high rock tower rose bare and jagged up into the blueness and looked down on Heidi quite seriously from up there. The child sat there as still as a mouse and looked all around, and all around was a great, deep silence; only very softly and quietly did the wind pass over the delicate, blue bellflowers and the golden, radiant cystus flowers, which stood all around on their thin stems and nodded softly and cheerfully to and fro. Peter had fallen asleep after his exertions, and the goats were climbing around on the bushes above. Heidi felt better than he had ever felt in his life. He soaked up the golden sunlight, the fresh air and the delicate scent of flowers and wanted nothing more than to stay there forever. A good while passed and Heidi had looked up so often and for so long at the high mountain peaks over there that now it was as if they had all got faces too and were looking down at him like good friends.

Now Heidi heard a loud, sharp cry and cawing sound above him, and as he looked up, a bird as big as he had never seen in his life was circling above him with its wings spread wide in the air, and it kept returning in large arcs, cawing loudly and piercingly above Heidi’s head.

“Peter! Peter! Wake up!” Heidi called out loudly. “Look, the bird of prey is here, look! Look!”

Peter rose at the call and watched the bird with Heidi as it soared higher and higher into the blue sky and finally disappeared over the gray rocks.

“Where has he gone now?” asked Heidi, who had been following the bird with rapt attention.

“Home to the nest,” was Peter’s reply.

“Is he at home up there? Oh, how beautiful so high up! Why is he screaming like that?” Heidi continued to ask.

“Because he has to,” explained Peter.

“Let’s climb up there and see where he’s at home,” Heidi suggested.

“Oh! oh! oh!” Peter burst out, uttering each exclamation with increased disapproval; “when no goat can go there and the Öhi has said you must not fall over the rocks.”