HEIDI
small brown flowers, the little round heads of which rose modestly here and there among the yellow blossoms. Heidi stood and gazed and drew in the delicious air. Suddenly she turned round and reached Clara’s side out of breath with running and excitement. “Oh, you must come,” she called out as soon as she came in sight, “it is more beautiful than you can imagine, and perhaps this evening it may not be so lovely. I believe I could carry you, don’t you think I could?”
Clara looked at her and shook her head. “Why, Heidi, what can you be thinking of! you are smaller than I am. Oh, if only I could walk!”
Heidi looked round as if in search of something, some new idea had evidently come into her head. Peter was sitting up above looking down on the two children. He had been sitting and staring before him in the same way for hours, as if he could not make out what he saw. He had destroyed the chair so that the friend might not be able to move anywhere and that her visit might come to an end, and then a little while after she had appeared right up here under his very nose with Heidi beside her. He thought his eyes must deceive him, and yet there she was and no mistake about it.
Heidi now looked up to where he was sitting and called out in a peremptory voice, “Peter, come down here!”
“I don’t wish to come,” he called in reply.
“But you are to, you must; I cannot do it alone, and you must come here and help me; make haste and come down,” she called again in an urgent voice.
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” was the answer.
[342]
