"How?" said Paula, smiling. "Last night I bought her from the landlord, and to-day I give her to you. Can you sing now?"
"Oh! oh! oh!" cried Moni, running to the stable like mad. He took the little goat and held her close in his arms. Then he came running back and held out his hand to the Fräulein, saying over and over again, "I thank you a thousand, thousand times! God reward you for it! If I could only do something for you!"
"Then sing your song and let us hear whether it has the old ring," said Paula.
So Moni lifted up his voice, and as he climbed the mountain his joyous notes rang out so clearly through the valley that every one in the hotel noticed it, and many a sleeper turned on his pillow, saying, "Good! the goat boy has sunshine once more."
They were all glad to hear him sing again, for they liked the early notes, which were to some a sign for rising, to others leave for another nap. When Moni looked down from the first ledge and saw the Fräulein still standing before the hotel, he stepped forward and sang as loudly as he could:
"And the sky is so blue
I am wild with delight."
Nothing but sounds of joy came from his lips all day, and the goats, too, seemed to feel that it was a day of gladness, and skipped and capered about as never before. The sun was so bright, the sky so blue, and after the heavy rains the grasses so green and the flowers so gay, that Moni thought he had never seen the world so beautiful. He kept his little kid beside him all day, plucked the best herbs for it, and fed it from his hand, saying again and again: "Meggy, dear little Meggy, you are not going to be killed. You are mine now, and will come up the mountain with me as long as we both live."
With happy song and yodel Moni returned in the evening, and after he had led the black goat to her stable he took the little one on his arm; she was henceforth to go home with him. Meggy seemed very well satisfied, and cuddled up to him as though she felt herself in the best of care; for he had always treated her more tenderly than her own mother had.
When Moni came home with the little one on his shoulder his grandmother hardly knew what to make of him. His calling out, "It is mine, grandmother; it is mine!" explained nothing to her. But Moni could not stop to explain until he had run to the stable and made a good bed for Meggy close beside their own goat, so that the little one would not be lonely.