Johanna Spyri - Heidi

‘There’s a boy here who wants to speak to Miss Clara personally,’ he announced. Clara’s eyes lit up at this highly unusual occurrence.

‘Bring him in at once,’ she said. ‘He can come, can’t he, Mr Usher?’

The boy was in fact already in the room and began to turn the handle of his organ. Miss Rottenmeier had gone to the dining‐room to avoid having to listen to a child learning the alphabet. Suddenly she pricked up her ears. Was that noise coming from the street? It sounded nearer but — there could never be a hurdy‐gurdy in the study! She ran to the door and there beheld the ragged street urchin calmly playing his organ. The tutor looked as though he wanted to say something, but couldn’t make up his mind to, while Clara and Heidi were listening to the music with obvious pleasure.

‘Stop, stop that at once!’ cried Miss Rottenmeier, but it was difficult to make her voice heard above the noise. She darted towards the boy, and all but tripped over something on the floor. Looking down, she saw, to her horror, a queer dark object at her feet. It was the tortoise. She leaped in the air to avoid it — leaped, and she hadn’t done that for years! Then she screamed at the top of her voice for Sebastian, and the boy stopped playing, for this time he heard her in spite of his music. Sebastian was standing just outside the door, doubled up with laughter. When at last he came in Miss Rottenmeier had collapsed on to a chair.

‘Get rid of that boy and his animal at once,’ she ordered.

The little organ player snatched up his tortoise and Sebastian led him away. On the landing, he put some coins into the boy’s hand, saying, ‘Here’s the money from Miss Clara, and a bit more for playing so nicely.’ Then he let him out at the front door.

When quiet had been restored in the study, lessons were resumed, but Miss Rottenmeier remained to prevent any more such unseemly happenings, and as she sat there, she made up her mind to find out what was at the bottom of it and to deal severely with whoever was responsible. Presently Sebastian came back to say that someone had just delivered a big basket which was to be given at once to Miss Clara.

‘To me?’ asked Clara in surprise, at once feeling most curious to know what it could contain. ‘Oh, bring it in at once.’ So Sebastian fetched in a closed basket, set it down before her, and went out again quickly.

‘You had better finish your lessons before opening it,’ remarked Miss Rottenmeier firmly, though Clara looked longingly at it.

Then, in the middle of a declension, she broke off to ask Mr Usher if she couldn’t have just a peep inside.

‘I could cite good reasons both for and against such a course of action,’ he began pompously. ‘In its favour is the fact that so long as your attention is entirely engaged…’ He got no further. The lid of the basket was not properly fastened, and suddenly the room seemed to be swarming with kittens. They jumped out one after another and rushed madly about, some biting the tutor’s trousers and jumping over his feet, others climbing up Miss Rottenmeier’s skirt. One scrambled on to Clara’s chair, mewing and scratching as it came. The whole room was in an uproar, and Clara was delighted.

‘Oh, aren’t they pretty little things! Just look at them jumping about!’ she exclaimed to Heidi, who was chasing after them from one end of the room to the other. Mr Usher was standing by the table, trying vainly to shake the kittens off his legs. Miss Rottenmeier, disliking all cats as she did, only found her voice again after an interval, and then called loudly for Sebastian and Tinette. She was afraid that if she moved all the horrid little creatures would jump up at her. The servants came quickly and Sebastian managed to catch the kittens and put them back into the basket. Then he carried them up to the attic where he had already made a bed for those Heidi had brought home the day before.

Once again Clara’s lesson‐time had been far from boring. That evening, when Miss Rottenmeier had recovered a little from the morning’s disturbance, she summoned Sebastian and Tinette to the study to question them about what had happened. Of course it came out that everything was the result of Heidi’s escapade the day before. Miss Rottenmeier was so angry she could not at first find words to express herself. She sent the servants away and then turned to Heidi who was standing calmly beside Clara’s chair, quite unable to understand what she had done wrong.

‘Adelheid,’ said Miss Rottenmeier very sternly, ‘I can think of only one punishment for such a little savage as you. Perhaps a spell in the dark cellar among the bats and rats will tame you, and stop you having any more such ideas.’

Heidi was very surprised at Miss Rottenmeier’s idea of punishment. The only place she knew as a cellar was the little shed in which her grandfather kept their supplies of cheese and milk and where she had always been glad to go. And she had never seen any bats or rats.

Clara, however, protested loudly. ‘Oh, Miss Rottenmeier! Wait till Papa comes home! He’ll be here quite soon, and I’ll tell him everything and he’ll decide what’s to be done with Heidi.’ Miss Rottenmeier could make no objection to this, and besides Clara must never be crossed.

‘Very well, Clara,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I also shall speak to your father.’ With that she left the room.

The next few days passed uneventfully, but Miss Rottenmeier’s nerves remained on edge. The sight of Heidi kept her reminded how she had been deceived over the child’s age, and how she had so upset the household that it seemed as though things would never be the same again. Clara, on the other hand, was very cheerful and no longer found her lessons dull. Heidi always managed to provide some amusement. For one thing, she invariably got the letters of the alphabet so muddled up, it seemed as though she would never learn them, and when Mr Usher tried to make things easier for her by comparing letters to familiar objects such as a horn or a beak, she thought of the goats at home, or the hawk on the mountain and that did not help her at all with her lesson.

In the evenings Heidi used to tell Clara about her life in the hut, but it made her feel so homesick that she often ended by exclaiming, ‘Oh I must go home again. I must go tomorrow.’ Clara tried to comfort her then by saying, ‘Stay at least until Papa arrives and then we’ll see what will happen.’ Heidi seemed to cheer up at that, but secretly she was consoling herself with the thought that every day she stayed meant two more white rolls for Peter’s Grannie. She had been putting them in her pocket at dinner and supper regularly since the day of her arrival and now had quite a pile hidden away. She wouldn’t eat a single one herself, because she knew how much Grannie would enjoy them instead of her usual hard black bread.

After dinner Heidi always sat alone in her room for a time. She had been made to realize that she could not simply run out‐of‐doors in Frankfurt as she had done at home, so she never tried again. Miss Rottenmeier had forbidden her to talk to Sebastian, and she would never have dreamed of starting a conversation with Tinette. Indeed she avoided her as much as possible for Tinette either spoke to her in the most disdainful way, or mimicked her, and Heidi knew quite well that she was being made fun of. So she had plenty of time every day to think how the snow would by now have melted on the mountain and of how beautiful it would be at home with the sun shining on the grass and the flowery slopes and over the valley below. She felt so homesick, she could hardly bear it. Then she remembered that her aunt had said she could go back if she wanted to. So one afternoon she wrapped up the rolls in her big red scarf, put on her old straw hat and went downstairs. But she had only got as far as the front door when she ran straight into Miss Rottenmeier returning from an outing. That forbidding person stared at Heidi in amazement and her sharp eyes came to rest on the red bundle.