The sixth girl, the last one, kicked the heel of her left foot with the toe of her right foot, put her thumbs under her ears and wiggled all her fingers, then stopped all her kicking and wiggling, and stood looking up at her balloons all quiet because the wind had gone down—and she murmured like she was thinking to herself:
“Balloons come from fire chasers. Every balloon has a fire chaser chasing it. All the fire chasers are made terrible quick and when they come they burn quick, so the balloon is made light so it can run away terrible quick. Balloons slip away from fire. If they don’t they can’t be balloons. Running away from fire keeps them light.”
All the time he listened to the six girls the face of the Gray Man kept getting more hopeful. His eyes lit up. Twice he smiled. And after he said good-by and rode up the street, he lifted his head and face to the sky and let loose a long ripple of laughs.
He kept looking back when he left the Village and the last thing he saw was the six girls each with six balloons fastened to the six braids of yellow hair hanging down their backs.
The sixth little girl kicked the heel of her left foot with the toe of her right foot and said, “He is a nice man. I think he must be our uncle. If he comes again we shall all ask him to tell us where he thinks balloons come from.”
And the other five girls all answered, “Yes,” or “Yes, yes,” or “Yes, yes, yes,” real fast like a balloon with a fire chaser after it.
