"S-s-sh!" cried the balloon man, "We will wake the baby if we are not careful."
"Won't it be sad if the bough breaks," said Puss, Junior, "it will be almost as bad for the baby as it was for us when the balloon fell into this tree."
"It might be worse," said one of the passengers, who stood near them on a limb, looking anxiously to the ground.
"Suppose we take down the cradle," said the balloon man.
"Somebody must have hung it up here," said Puss, "we have no right to take it down; it's not our baby."
"You are perfectly right," said another passenger. "It isn't our cradle and it isn't our baby, so the best thing for us to do is to leave the cradle and climb down."
As soon as the passengers were once more upon the ground they demanded their fare back, saying that they had paid for a trip to the moon, and not for a fall into a willow tree.
"This doesn't seem quite fair to me," remarked the balloon man, looking ruefully at his wrecked balloon. "I don't think I should give you back more than half, for the first part of the journey was successful."
"You didn't keep to your bargain," cried Puss, stoutly; "and besides, you endangered our lives. I don't want to pay to go up in the air a little way and then be hurled down into a willow tree; it takes all the niceness out of the way up and makes the way down too dangerous."
So the balloon man paid back the money and turned away. "Why don't you take the basket car with you?" asked Puss, Junior.