“I often think so. Peter doesn’t care a bit to watch the mountains, and he doesn’t know how beautiful they can be. He never listens to what the water says, and he doesn’t know a bit how happy it makes one to see beautiful things and think about how they come to be there. Herr Adler says that if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear, everything in the beautiful world tells us about God and His Kingdom, and I’m sure it does. It has made up for everything to me. I don’t think I want anything different now.”
“Well, if you don’t want it different, I’ll try not to want it either. But I can’t help thinking how nice it would be if you could have been my guide some day when we were both men, and I came to stay in your father’s hotel.”
The talk about that hotel was a great amusement and pleasure to the boys in the days to come. Seppi was failing rapidly. He was still able to be out near home with the goats, and Squib would join him almost daily, often with some interesting piece of information about the negotiation of the land purchase, which was going on still. Colonel Rutland was buying the site, Squib presently informed Seppi, and he would then make it over to Ernsthausen as his own. Then, after the sale of the present plot of ground and chalet, the man would have enough with his savings to ask the needful loan from government, and commence the building. It would not take long to run up the modest building he required, and by the following spring he would be able to open it for the use of mountaineers, for whose resort it was mainly to be put up. The children were never tired of talking about it, and by this time the whole family knew what was on foot, and were in a state of excitement and pleasure. Peter was going to realize his dream, and live a wider and more exciting life, not quite so much shut in as now by the limits of the narrow valley. The mother would not be separated from her husband during the summer, and would have congenial occupation at his side; and as for Ann-Katherin, she caught the prevailing excitement without exactly knowing what it was all about, and thought that everything would be delightful, though she could not at all imagine living anywhere but in her own beautiful valley.