Heidi now came running out of the hut and round to the shed.
Grandfather was behind with Clara in his arms. The shed stood
wide open, the two loose planks having been taken down, and it
was quite light inside. Heidi looked into every corner and ran
from one end to the other, and then stood still wondering what
could have happened to the chair. Grandfather now came up.
"How is this, have you wheeled the chair away, Heidi?"
"I have been looking everywhere for it, grandfather; you said it
was standing ready outside," and she again searched each corner
of the shed with her eyes.
At that moment the wind, which had risen suddenly, blew open the
shed door and sent it banging back against the wall.
"It must have been the wind, grandfather," exclaimed Heidi, and
her eyes grew anxious at this sudden discovery. "Oh! if it has
blown the chair all the way down to Dorfli we shall not get it
back in time, and shall not be able to go."
"If it has rolled as far as that it will never come back, for it
is in a hundred pieces by now," said the grandfather, going
round the corner and looking down. "But it's a curious thing to
have happened!" he added as he thought over the matter, for the
chair would have had to turn a corner before starting down hill.
"Oh, I am sorry," lamented Clara, "for we shall not be able to
go to-day, or perhaps any other day. I shall have to go home, I
suppose, if I have no chair. Oh, I am so sorry, I am so sorry!"
But Heidi looked towards her grandfather with her usual
expression of confidence.
"Grandfather, you will be able to do something, won't you, so
that it need not be as Clara says, and so that she is not
obliged to go home?"
"Well, for the present we will go up the mountain as we had
arranged, and then later on we will see what can be done," he
217