The next day, Heidi made a suggestion:
"Clara, I can read aloud to you every day, just as I did for Grandmamma."
Clara agreed, and Heidi started reading with her usual enthusiasm.
But Heidi had hardly begun when she cried out,
"Oh no! Then Grannie is dead!" and burst into tears.
The story was about a dying grandmother.
It seemed so real to her that Heidi could not stop thinking that it was Peter's grandmother who had died.
"She is dead.
I shall never see her again.
She never had the chance to eat one white roll," Heidi sobbed.
Clara explained over and over that the story was about a different grandmother.
But even when Heidi understood that it was only a story and not real, she couldn't stop weeping.
Fraulein came into the room and Clara explained what had happened.
As Heidi continued to weep, Fraulein became impatient.
"Now, Heidi, that is enough!" she said.
"If you act like this again while you are reading, I will take your book away and never let you have it again!"
Fraulein's words had an immediate effect.
Heidi turned pale with fear.
The book was Heidi's one treasure.
She quickly dried her eyes and swallowed her sobs.
Heidi never let herself cry out loud again, but she often had to struggle to keep back her tears.
As the weeks passed, Heidi battled silently with her terrible homesickness.
She would sit in a corner of her lonely room until Clara sent for her.
She lost her appetite and did not know if it was winter or summer.
Heidi began to look so pale and thin that Sebastian became concerned.
One day, something very mysterious started to happen.
Every morning, the front door was found wide open.
Fraulein could find no explanation for it.
So one night, Sebastian and John, the stable boy, stayed up to watch the front door.
During the night, both men fell asleep, but John suddenly awoke to see a white figure before him.
He gave a cry of alarm and Sebastian woke up.
"What's the matter?
What did you see?" Sebastian asked.
"A white figure standing on the stairs.
It stood there a minute and disappeared," explained John.
Sebastian felt his blood run cold.
When Fraulein heard the story, she immediately wrote to Clara's father.
When Herr Sesemann read her letter, he did not believe there was a ghost in his house, but he felt that he should investigate.
Two days later, he arrived at the house.
"And how is the ghost getting on?"
asked Herr Sesemann upon seeing Fraulein.
"It is no joke, I assure you," replied Fraulein.
"You will not laugh tomorrow morning, Herr Sesemann."
Clara's father decided to ask his good friend, Clara's doctor, to come and spend the evening.
The doctor arrived punctually at nine o'clock, and together, they waited up for the ghost.
At one o'clock, there was not a sound in the house.
Then suddenly, the doctor lifted his finger.
They both listened.
They distinctly heard the bar on the door being pushed aside and the key turning in the lock.
"Who is there?" thundered the doctor.
The figure at the door turned and gave a little cry.
There, standing before them in her white nightgown, was Heidi.