THE BALLOON WENT OVER THE WIDE BLUE WATER JUST AFTER IT GOT OUR FAMILY
"I never had such a trip as that before, and never expect to have one again. The balloon went over the Wide Blue Water just after it got our family, and we were all afraid we would be let down in it and drowned; but the people who were in the balloon threw out something heavy which we thought at first they were throwing at us, but it must have been something to make the balloon go up; for we did go up until Aunt Melissy said if we'd just get a little nearer one of those clouds she'd step out on it and live there, as she'd always wanted to do since she was a child.
"Then we all sat up and held on tight, above and below, and said what a nice day it was to travel, and that we'd always travel that way hereafter; and Uncle Silas and the hired man unhooked their furniture, so they could land easier when the time came, and Aunt Melissy passed around the lunch, and we looked down and saw the water and the land again and a lot of houses and trees, and Aunt Melissy said that nobody could ever made her believe the world was that big if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes.
"And Uncle Silas and the hired man said that of course this was going pretty fast, but that they had travelled a good deal faster sometimes when they were in town with Cousin Glenwood, and pretty soon he showed us the town where Cousin Glenwood lived, and he and the hired man tried to point out the house to us, but they couldn't agree about which it was because the houses didn't look the same from up there in the air as they did from down on the ground.
"I know I shall never forget that trip. We saw ever so many different Mr. Men and Mr. Dogs, and animals of every kind, and houses that had chimneys taller than any tree, and a good many things that even Uncle Silas did not know about. Then by-and-by we came to some woods again—the biggest kind of Big Deep Woods—and we saw that we were getting close to the tree-tops, and we were all afraid we would get hit by the branches and maybe knocked off with our things.
"And pretty soon, sure enough, that anchor did drop right down among the trees, and such a clapping and scratching as we did get!
"We shut our eyes and held on, and some of our furniture was brushed off of Uncle Silas and the hired man, and Aunt Melissy lost her umbrella, and I lost a toy chicken, which I could never find again. Then all at once there was a big sudden jerk that jarred Uncle Silas loose, and made Aunt Melissy holler that she was killed, and knocked the breath out of the rest of us for a few minutes.
"But we were all there, and the anchor was fast on the limb of a big tree—a tree almost as big as the Hollow Tree, and hollow, just like it, with a nice handy place to go in.
"So when we got our senses back we picked up all our things that we could find, and moved into the new place, and Aunt Melissy looked at the clock, which was still running, and it was just a little over two hours since we started.