Page:Heidi - Spyri - 1922.djvu/111

 new companion for the daughter of the house, to see what she was like. She did not seem very pleased with her appearance. Heidi was dressed in her plain little woollen frock, and her hat was an old straw one bent out of shape. The child looked innocently out from beneath it, gazing with unconcealed astonishment at the lady’s towering head dress.

“What is your name?” asked Fräulein Rottenmeier, after scrutinizingly examining the child for some minutes, while Heidi in return kept her eyes steadily fixed upon the lady.

“Heidi,” she answered in a clear, ringing voice.

“What? what? that’s no Christian name for a child; you were not christened that. What name did they give you when you were baptized?” continued Fräulein Rottenmeier.

“I do not remember,” replied Heidi.

“What a way to answer!” said the lady, shaking her head. “Dete, is the child a simpleton or only saucy?”

“If the lady will allow me, I will speak for the child, for she is very unaccustomed to strangers,” said Dete, who had given Heidi a silent poke for making such an unsuitable answer. “She is certainly not stupid nor yet saucy, she does not know what it means even; she speaks exactly as she thinks. To-day she is for the first time in a gentleman’s house and she does not know good manners; but she is docile and very willing to learn, if the lady will kindly make excuses for her. She was christened Adelaide, after her mother, my sister, who is now dead.”

“Well, that’s a name that one can pronounce,” remarked Fräulein Rottenmeier. “But I must tell you, Dete, that I am astonished to see so young a child. I told you that I wanted a companion of the same age as the young lady of the house, one