The latter had so thoroughly examined Heidi on all sides that
she was well able to describe her to her mother.

"She has Adelaide's slenderness of figure, but her eyes are dark
and her hair curly like her father's and the old man's up there:
she takes after both of them, I think."

Heidi meanwhile had not been idle; she had made the round of the
room and looked carefully at everything there was to be seen.
All of a sudden she exclaimed, "Grandmother, one of your shutters
is flapping backwards and forwards; grandfather would put a nail
in and make it all right in a minute, or else it will break one
of the panes some day; look, look, how it keeps on banging!"

"Ah, dear child," said the old woman, "I am not able to see it,
but I can hear that and many other things besides the shutter.
Everything about the place rattles and creaks when the wind is
blowing, and it gets inside through all the cracks and holes.
The house is going to pieces, and in the night, when the two
others are asleep, I often lie awake in fear and trembling,
thinking that the whole place will give way and fall and kill us.
And there is not a creature to mend anything for us, for Peter
does not understand such work."

"But why cannot you see, grandmother, that the shutter is loose.
Look, there it goes again, see, that one there!" And Heidi
pointed to the particular shutter.

"Alas, child, it is not only that I cannot see--I can see,