Johanna Spyri - Heidi

All at once it turned really cold and Peter arrived in the mornings blowing on his hands to warm them. Then one night it started to snow and in the morning everything was white. It snowed until there was not a single green leaf to be seen, and of course Peter didn’t bring the goats up. From the window Heidi watched with delight as the snowflakes fell, faster and faster, and the snow drifted higher and higher till the hut was buried up to the window sills and it was impossible to go out. She hoped it would go on falling until the hut was completely covered, so that they would have to light the lamp during the day, but that did not happen. Next morning her grandfather was able to dig his way out, and shovelled the snow away from the walls, throwing up great piles of it from his spade as he worked. Then in the afternoon he and Heidi sat down by the fire, each on a three‐legged stool, for of course he had long ago made one for her. They were interrupted by a great banging at the door, as though someone was kicking it. Then it was opened, and there stood Peter, knocking the snow off his boots before coming in. He had had to fight his way through high drifts and it was so cold that the snow had frozen on to him, and still clung to his clothes. But he had kept bravely on, determined to get to Heidi after not seeing her for a whole week.

‘Hullo,’ he said and went straight over to the stove. He didn’t say anything more but stood beaming at them, well pleased to be there. Heidi watched in astonishment as the heat of the stove began to thaw the snow so that it trickled off him in a steady flow.

‘Well, General,’ said the old man, ‘how are you getting on now that you’ve had to leave your army and start chewing a pencil?’

‘Chewing a pencil?’ exclaimed Heidi with interest. ‘Yes, in the winter Peter has to go to school and learn to read and write. That’s no easy matter you know, and it sometimes helps a bit to chew a pencil, doesn’t it, General?’

‘Yes it does,’ agreed Peter.

Immediately Heidi wanted to know just what he did at school. Peter always found it difficult to put his thoughts into words and Heidi had so many questions to ask that no sooner had he managed to deal with one than she was ready with two or three more, most of them needing a whole sentence in reply. His clothes were quite dry again before she was satisfied. The old man listened quietly to their chatter, smiling from time to time. As they fell silent he got up and went over to the cupboard.

‘Well, General, you’ve been under fire, now you’ll need some refreshment,’ he said.

He soon had supper ready and Heidi put chairs round the table. The hut was less bare now than when she first arrived, for Grandfather had made one bench which was fixed to the wall and other seats big enough for two people, for Heidi always liked to be close beside him. Now they could all sit down in comfort, and as Peter did so, he opened his round eyes very wide at the huge piece of dried meat Uncle Alp put on a thick slice of bread for him. It was a long time since he had had such a good meal. As soon as they had finished eating Peter got ready to go, for it was growing dark.

‘Goodbye,’ he said, ‘and thank you. I’ll come again next Sunday, and Grannie says she would like you to come and see her.’

Heidi was delighted at the idea of going to visit someone, for that would be something quite new, so the first thing she said next morning was ‘Grandfather, I must go and see Peter’s Grannie today. She’ll be expecting me.’

‘The snow is too deep,’ said Uncle Alp, trying to put her off.

But the idea was firmly in her head, and day after day she said at least half a dozen times that she really must go or Grannie would be tired of waiting for her. On the fourth day after Peter’s visit the snow froze hard and crackled underfoot, and the sun was shining brightly, straight on to Heidi’s face as she sat on her high chair eating her dinner. Again she said, ‘I must go and see Grannie today, or she’ll think I’m not coming.’

Her grandfather left the table and went up to the loft, from which he brought down the thick sack off her bed. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, and they went out together.

Heidi skipped delightedly into the shining white world. The branches of the fir trees were weighed down with snow which sparkled in the sunshine. Heidi had never seen anything like it.

‘Just look at the trees,’ she cried, ‘they’re all gold and silver.’

Meanwhile Grandfather had dragged a big sledge out of the shed. It had a bar along one side to hold on to, and it was steered by pressing the heels against the ground on one side or the other. To please Heidi he went round with her to look at the snow‐clad trees. Then he sat down on the sledge with her on his knees, well wrapped up in the sack to keep her warm. He held her tightly with his left arm and, taking hold of the bar with his right hand, pushed off with both feet. They went down the mountain so fast that Heidi felt as though she was flying, and screamed with delight. They stopped with a jerk just outside Peter’s hut. Grandfather set her on her feet and took off the sack.

‘Now go in,’ he said, ‘but start for home as soon as it begins to get dark.’ Then he turned back up the mountain, pulling the sledge behind him.

The door Heidi opened led into a small kitchen, in which there was a stove and some pots on a shelf. A second door opened into another low little room. Compared with Grandfather’s hut with its fine big room and the hay loft above, this place seemed wretchedly cramped. She went in and saw a woman sitting at a table mending a jacket which she recognized as Peter’s. In one corner another woman, old and bent, was spinning. Heidi went straight to her and said, ‘Hullo, Grannie, here I am at last. I expect you thought I was never coming.’

Grannie raised her head and felt for Heidi’s hand. When she had found it, she held it in her own for a while and then said, ‘Are you the child from Uncle Alp’s? Are you Heidi?’

‘Yes, and Grandfather has just brought me down on the sledge.’

‘Fancy that. And yet your hand is so warm. Bridget, did Uncle Alp really bring her himself?’

Peter’s mother left her mending to come and look at the child. ‘I don’t know, mother,’ she said, ‘it does not sound likely. She must be mistaken.’

Heidi looked her straight in the eye and said firmly, ‘I’m not mistaken. It was Grandfather. He wrapped me up in my blanket and brought me down himself.’

‘Well, well. Peter must have been right after all in what he told us about Uncle Alp,’ said Grannie. ‘We always thought he’d got it all wrong. Who would have believed it? To tell the truth, I didn’t think the child would last three weeks up there. What does she look like, Bridget?’

‘She’s thin, like her mother was, but she’s got black eyes and curly hair like Tobias and the old man. She’s really more like them, I think.’

Heidi looked about the room while the women were talking, and her sharp eyes missed nothing.

‘One of your shutters is hanging loose, Grannie,’ she remarked. ‘Grandfather would soon mend it, and it’ll break the window if nothing’s done about it. Look how it bangs to and fro.’

‘I can’t see it, my dear, but I can hear it very well, and everything else that creaks and clatters here when the wind blows through the cracks. The place is falling to pieces and at night, when the other two are asleep, I am often afraid that some time it may fall on us and kill us all. And there’s no one to do anything about it. Peter doesn’t know how.’