Heidi’s thwarted attempt to return home brings the private ache of her Frankfurt homesickness into open conflict with the household’s rules. She sets out carrying the white rolls she has been saving for Heidi's grandmother, but Fraulein Rottenmeier intercepts her at the hall door. The departure fails; the bundle that was meant to travel with Heidi instead exposes how persistently she has been thinking of those left behind.

Causes and Background

In the days before the attempt, Heidi’s presence unsettles Fraulein Rottenmeier, who cannot forget that she was deceived about the child and feels that the household has been thrown into disorder. Clara, by contrast, has become cheerier. Heidi distracts her during lessons, though she still cannot learn the alphabet: images prompted by the tutor’s descriptions of letters lead her to exclaim that she sees a goat or a bird of prey. Their different responses to Heidi’s presence sharpen the contrast between the orderly Frankfurt household and the imaginative world she carries from the mountains.

In the afternoons, Heidi tells Clara long accounts of mountain life. As she describes it, her own desire to return grows so strong that she repeatedly insists that she must go home the next day. Clara asks her to wait until her father returns, and Heidi seems to settle each time. Yet she is also encouraged by the thought that each passing day adds two white rolls to the store she is collecting for Heidi's grandmother: she pockets the roll beside her plate at both dinner and supper because she believes her grandmother has no white bread and can scarcely manage the hard black bread.

Her longing is sustained by both absence and imagination. She spends hours alone in her room, having understood that she cannot roam outdoors in Frankfurt as she did on the mountain. Conversation with Sebastian in the dining room is forbidden, and she avoids Tinette, who speaks to her mockingly. With little to do, Heidi pictures the familiar landscape turning green, the yellow flowers shining, and the valley, rocks, and snow bright in the sunshine. Dete has also told her that she may go home whenever she likes. When the longing becomes unbearable, that assurance and the growing bundle of bread help turn a recurring wish into action.

The Attempt and Interception

Heidi hurries to tie the saved rolls into her red shawl, puts on her straw hat, and goes downstairs. She is not dressed for a formal departure: when Fraulein Rottenmeier sees her at the hall door, her gaze fixes in particular on the red bundle. She demands to know why Heidi is dressed that way and reminds her that she has been forbidden to run about in the streets. Heidi answers, “I was not going to run about, I was going home.” The reply makes plain that, to Heidi, this is not a forbidden outing or a prank but an attempt to return to the place she understands as home.

Fraulein Rottenmeier treats the departure as disobedience and ingratitude. She asks what Herr Sesemann would say, insists that Heidi has been well treated, and argues that she has lacked for nothing in the large house. Heidi does not dispute the comforts she has received; she answers no when asked whether she has ever had such a house, table, or service before. But material comfort does not answer the reason she wants to leave. Her attachment is to particular people, animals, and sights that Frankfurt cannot supply.

What Heidi Says She Is Leaving For

At the height of the confrontation, Heidi explains what home means to her. She fears that Snowflake will begin crying while she is away, that Heidi's grandmother is waiting for her, and that Greenfinch will be beaten because she is not there to give Peter cheese. She also misses watching the sun set behind the mountains. In her account, the landscape is not merely scenery: seeing the sun say good-night to the mountains is one of the daily experiences from which she has been cut off.

Heidi adds the image of a great bird flying over Frankfurt and croaking about people crowded together, teaching one another bad things, and failing to live high among the rocks. This imagined rebuke gathers her discontent into a sharp contrast between the close-packed city and the mountain life she remembers as better. Fraulein Rottenmeier hears this speech as evidence that Heidi has lost her mind, cries out in alarm, and rushes upstairs, colliding with Sebastian. She orders him to bring the child inside. The episode ends the immediate attempt at the door, but not the homesickness that produced it.

The Hidden Rolls and Their Loss

The next day, Fraulein Rottenmeier tells the tutor that she fears the change of air and surroundings has affected Heidi’s mind. The tutor reassures her that Heidi is eccentric but otherwise sound, and attributes the difficulty with the alphabet to her failure to understand the letters. Later, when Fraulein Rottenmeier considers supplementing Heidi’s clothes with garments from Clara’s wardrobe so she will look respectable when Herr Sesemann returns, she searches through the child’s belongings and discovers a heap of rolls hidden in a clothes cupboard.

Tinette is ordered to remove the bread and Heidi’s old straw hat. Heidi protests that the hat must stay and that the rolls are for her grandmother, then tries to stop Tinette. Fraulein Rottenmeier holds her back while the rolls are taken away. Heidi collapses onto Clara’s couch, crying that her grandmother’s bread is gone and that her grandmother will have none. The hidden food reveals the practical purpose behind the red bundle: the bread was not a random possession but a gift Heidi had been carefully accumulating for someone she feared was going without.

Clara comforts Heidi by promising that she will have just as many rolls, or more, fresh and new to take home. Heidi cannot stop sobbing for a long time, and repeatedly asks Clara to confirm the promise. It is this assurance, rather than the return of the old rolls, that finally calms her. At supper she still sobs at the sight of her roll, though she tries to control herself because she knows she must sit quietly at the table. Sebastian silently signals that he has kept something safe for her. That night Heidi finds her old straw hat beneath the counterpane; delighted, she wraps it in a handkerchief and hides it at the back of the cupboard.

Consequences and Significance

The failed departure exposes the limits of the household’s understanding of Heidi. Fraulein Rottenmeier interprets the attempt through rules, gratitude, and proper appearance; Heidi’s own explanation is relational and concrete, grounded in Heidi's grandmother, Peter, the goats, and the mountain sunset. The argument cannot be settled by pointing to the comfort of the house, because comfort is not what Heidi is asking for. She wants to go back to people and a landscape that remain present to her even while she is confined indoors.

The incident also gives the saved rolls a second meaning. Their accumulation marks the passage of days in Frankfurt, but it is not simply a private measure of homesickness: Heidi has been preparing to share them with Heidi's grandmother. Their confiscation deepens her distress, and Clara’s promise becomes a temporary substitute for the lost bundle and the thwarted journey. The preserved straw hat, hidden again after the rolls are taken, leaves the episode with a small but telling remainder of Heidi’s preparations. She has been stopped from going home, yet her concern for home continues to shape what she saves and what she cannot bear to surrender.