Heidi shouted for joy at the thought that grandmother would
never need any more to eat hard black bread, and "Oh,
grandfather!" she said, "everything is happier now than it has
ever been in our lives before!" and she sang and skipped along,
holding her grandfather's hand as light-hearted as a bird. But
all at once she grew quiet and said, "If God had let me come at
once, as I prayed, then everything would have been different, I
should only have had a little bread to bring to grandmother, and
I should not have been able to read, which is such a comfort to
her; but God has arranged it all so much better than I knew how
to; everything has happened just as the other grandmother said it
would. Oh, how glad I am that God did not let me have at once all
I prayed and wept for! And now I shall always pray to God as she
told me, and always thank Him, and when He does not do anything I
ask for I shall think to myself, It's just like it was in
Frankfurt: God, I am sure, is going to do something better still.
So we will pray every day, won't we, grandfather, and never
forget Him again, or else He may forget us."
"And supposing one does forget Him?" said the grandfather in a
low voice.
"Then everything goes wrong, for God lets us then go where we
like, and when we get poor and miserable and begin to cry about
it no one pities us, but they say, You ran away from God, and so
God, who could have helped you, left you to yourself."
"That is true, Heidi; where did you learn that?"
"From grandmamma; she explained it all to me."
The grandfather walked on for a little while without speaking,
then he said, as if following his own train of thought: "And if
it once is so, it is so always; no one can go back, and he whom
God has forgotten, is forgotten for ever."
"Oh, no, grandfather, we can go back, for grandmamma told me so,
and so it was in the beautiful tale in my book--but you have not
heard that yet; but we shall be home directly now, and then I
will read it you, and you will see how beautiful it is." And in
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