was a source of daily wonder, and on many an
evening when the hymn had been read and the
reader tucked away in bed, she would say to the
grandmother: --

"We cannot be thankful enough that Peterli has
learned to read so nicely; who can say now what
he may not make of himself?"

To this the grandmother once answered: --

"Yes, it is a good thing that he has learned
something, but I shall be very glad if the dear
Lord sends an early spring so that Heidi can soon
come again. The hymns do not seem at all the
same when Peter reads them. So often something
is left out of the verses and I have to think what it
is, and by the time I have found it, he is so far
ahead that I cannot follow the thought, and so I
do not get as much good out of the hymns as when
Heidi reads."

Truth to tell, Peter suited the reading to his
own convenience; whenever he came to a word that
looked very long, or suggested other difficulties,
he left it out altogether. "For," thought he,
"what difference can two or three words more or
less in a verse make to grandmother; there are
plenty left." And so it happened that in the
hymns that Peter read there was a wonderful
scarcity of nouns.

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