and started over the Alps with them. There was a big hole in the bag, so every once in a while a house dropped out, until he lost everything he had stolen. Every house stopped where it was dropped because it couldn't get down again. The funny thing about it was that there were people in those houses, and they staid, too, because they liked the country. They couldn't agree on a King, so they agreed to do without one; and every man kept his own language and learned the others. By and by, so many English and American travellers visited the country, that the Swiss people learned English, too." The Swiss people always tell this story to their children.
The first time her big brother Victor told her the Lazy Goblin story, little Marie Louise laughed. She loved her mountain home. From the air-ship you can see it down there on its shelf of rock. A stone wall with a grove of pine trees is behind and above it, to keep the mountain snow from falling on it. The roof slopes so far out beyond the walls, to let the snow slide off, that you cannot see its many little windows filled with blooming plants. But you can see Marie Louise outside, in her bright blue skirt, white blouse, and black velveteen waist laced tight to her plump little body.
Marie Louise feeds the chickens and waters the potato patch. She sits among the flower beds with her knitting and watches the honey bees filling the hives. She has bread and butter and honey, wild strawberries, goat's milk and cream cheese for her dinner. She eats from a wooden bowl that her father made. Victor carved a wild strawberry vine around it. Victor made her a spoon from the horn of a chamois (sham-my). A chamois is a very fleet little mountain antelope. Her winter coat is lined with warm chamois skin. On her spoon handle is carved a bunch of edelweiss. Edelweiss is a tiny white flower that grows high up on the banks of the frozen rivers. This is how Victor got a bunch for a pattern.
He guided some travellers across the glaciers, and away up among the icy peaks. He took his iron-tipped staff, or alpenstock, to keep from slipping, and tied the travellers to loops in a long rope, one behind the other. When he brought them all down safely they gave him money. He showed Marie Louise how high, and in what dangerous places he had been, by the bunch of edelweiss in his hat.
In the summer Victor is a guide. The father goes up the mountain with the cows, to where there is sweet grass. There he lives in a little dairy house and makes butter and cheese. In the winter time they are all together in the house. There is a big porcelain
