Heidi

Heidi is a cheerful, blunt, endlessly curious little girl who has been passed from relative to relative since her parents died. As the story opens, her aunt Dete is marching her up an Alpine path to leave her with a grandfather she has never met. Heidi says exactly what she thinks, loves being outdoors more than anything, and is far less frightened of strangers than a child her age is expected to be.

Dete is Heidi's mother's sister. She has looked after the child for some years while working as a servant, and as the story opens she is climbing the mountain path from Mayenfeld with Heidi in tow. She is practical, talkative, and in a hurry: a good place of work is waiting, and she has decided the child's grandfather must take her now.

Known to the village only as Alm-Uncle, he lives by himself in a hut high above Doerfli with two goats and three old fir trees for company. Years of hard luck and old rumors have left him bitter toward his neighbors; he refuses to go to church, speaks in short gruff sentences, and everyone in the valley gives him a wide berth. Whatever the villagers whisper about him, he is remarkably capable with his hands and knows the mountain better than anyone alive.

Every morning Peter climbs from the village to collect the goats and drive them up to the high pasture, and every evening he whistles them back down. He is good-natured and astonishingly sure-footed on rock, but words come to him slowly. The mountain is the world he knows, and he knows every spring, ledge, and patch of good grazing on it.

Brigitta keeps the goatherd's poor cottage halfway down the mountain, spinning and mending while Peter is out with the flock. She is a hardworking village woman, curious about her neighbors and used to making do with very little. As the story opens she is simply Peter's mother — the woman of that rattling house below the Alm.

Peter's grandmother lives in a crooked, rattling hut halfway down the mountain with Peter and his mother, Brigitta. She lost her sight years ago and can no longer leave her chair, so she passes the days spinning and listening to the wind shake the shutters. She is warm, deeply devout, and grateful for the smallest kindness, and she remembers everyone in Doerfli by voice alone.

Clara lives in a large, quiet house in Frankfurt with her often-absent father, Mr. Sesemann, and a staff of servants. An illness has left her unable to walk, so she spends her days being wheeled from room to room, watching the clock and waiting for lessons or visitors. She is patient, gentle, and lonelier than she lets on, and she has been promised a companion near her own age.

Mr. Sesemann is Clara's father and the master of a large house in Frankfurt. His work takes him away for long stretches, and in his absence he leaves the household in the housekeeper's charge, with the rule that nothing is to be done against Clara's wish. He is affectionate with his daughter, used to being obeyed, and quicker to laugh than to take alarm.

Grandmamma Sesemann is Clara's father's mother, a keen, kind old lady who comes to stay in the Frankfurt house. She notices what other grown-ups have stopped seeing, and she speaks to children as if their thoughts were worth hearing. She is used to having her own way in a household, and she does it without fuss.

Since the death of Clara's mother, Miss Rottermeyer has managed the Sesemann house, the servants, and Clara's daily routine, and Mr. Sesemann leaves nearly every decision to her. She values good manners, correct speech, and an unbroken schedule above almost everything else, and she has firm opinions about how a young lady ought to behave. Anything unexpected in her orderly household is, to her, a problem to be corrected at once.

The doctor is a long-standing friend of Mr. Sesemann's in Frankfurt, trusted enough to be sent for at short notice. He has a fresh, kindly manner and is more inclined to laugh than to be solemn. When he first appears he is simply the family friend who knows the house and the people in it.

Sebastian is the Sesemanns' butler: he opens the door, waits at table, and wheels Clara's couch from room to room. He has a dry sense of humor and is quicker to be kind to a child than his place strictly requires. In the household he takes orders from Miss Rottermeyer and carries them out with a straight face.

Tinette is the maid who ushers visitors upstairs and attends to the rooms. She is dainty in her dress and not especially patient with people she considers beneath the house. She does as Miss Rottermeyer tells her and does not hide her opinion of a poorly dressed child.