Page:Heidi - Spyri - 1922.djvu/316

 ought to be and then I lose the sense, and so the hymns do not come home to my heart as when Heidi reads them.”

The truth was that Peter arranged to make his reading as little troublesome for himself as possible. When he came upon a word that he thought was too long or difficult in any other way, he left it out, for he decided that a word or two less in a verse, where there were so many of them, could make no difference to his grandmother. And so it came about that most of the principal words were missing in the hymns that Peter read aloud.