So the rabbit gentleman tied the balloons to the clothes basket, and he made the basket fast to the ground with some clothes-pins, so it wouldn’t go up before he was ready for it. Next he got an electric fan, which goes around whizzie-izzie and makes the air cool on a hot day, and the rabbit gentleman fastened this fan on the back of his clothes basket.
“Now I have my airship,” Uncle Wiggily said to the monkey gentleman. “I shall go up and sail to my burrow. I think Nurse Jane will be surprised.”
Uncle Wiggily started to climb into the basket.
“Wait! Wait!” called the monkey gentleman, who had sold him the toy balloons.
“What is the matter?” asked Uncle Wiggily.
“You had better take some soft sofa cushions in with you,” spoke the monkey gentleman. “You—you might fall in your airship, you know,” he whispered, sort of bashful like, “and the cushions would be a good thing to fall on.”
“I believe you are right,” Uncle Wiggily answered. “Thank you! I’ll take a few.”
So he put some sofa cushions in the clothes basket.
“Now I am ready!” he called. “Please take off the clothes-pins and I will go up. I am going to sail like the airship-birdmen I read of in the newspaper this morning.”
The monkey gentleman took the clothes-pins off the ropes that held down Uncle Wiggily’s airship and pop-up it went, lifted by the toy balloons—red, green, blue, orange and skilligimink color.