“Well, I only hope you don’t fall,” said Nurse Jane, sort of anxious like.
“I’ve got the soft sofa cushions under me, if I do,” answered Uncle Wiggily, with a laugh.
Up he went, high in the air, the electric fan going whizzie-izzie, and the balloons lifting the clothes basket off the ground.
Well, Uncle Wiggily in his airship, sailed on and on, and pretty soon, all of a sudden, quick-like, it began to hail. There was a hard hail storm. And hail, you know, is frozen rain. Down pelted the round hail stones on Uncle Wiggily and his airship.
“Oh, me! Oh, my, and some lolly-pops!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “I think something is going to happen.” And just then a hail stone hit on the end of his twinkling nose, making him sneeze—“ker-cher! Ker-choo!”
Then something else happened. More hail stones came down, and “Pop! Pop! Pop!” went the toy balloons, bursting one after another, as the hard hail hit them, just as when the Mother Goose pins had pricked them.
“Oh, dear! I’m going to fall again!” cried the rabbit gentleman, for he knew when the balloons burst there would be nothing to hold him and his clothesbasket airship up above the earth.
And, surely enough, he began to fall. Down and down he went, with the hail falling all around him.
“My! I hope the sofa cushions don’t fall out of my clothes basket!” thought the rabbit gentleman, “for if they do I will get a very hard bump.”
But, as it happened, he did not need the soft cushions, for, all of a sudden, his airship turned over, and he fell into a tree, spilling right out, and landing in the branches. Luckily, there were green leaves on them, and they made a soft place on which Uncle Wiggily fell. He was scratched some, but Nurse Jane’s court plaster would fix that. The airship, however, kept on falling until it landed on the ground at the foot of the tree.