“Oh, but I am glad to hear that!” Uncle Wiggily cried, for he liked his little duck niece very much. “And, since you have been such a good pupil, I will take you up in my airship,” he said. “Oh, joy!” cried Lulu, flapping her wings and quacking as she had done in the examinations.
“But we will not go up very high.” Uncle Wiggily went on. “Since we have not the sofa cushions with us, we might get hurt if we had an accident and fell. So I will only take you up a little way, Lulu.”
“Oh, even a little ride will be lovely!” quacked the duck girl. She and Uncle Wiggily got in the airship, and away they went, about as high as a jumping rope.
“Oh, this is lovely!” cried Lulu. “Thank you so much, Uncle Wiggily! It is very good of you.”
“Pray do not say so,” spoke the old gentleman rabbit. And then, all at once, something went wrong with the airship, and it shot up, away above the trees. Higher and higher it went before the rabbit gentleman could stop it.
“Oh, if we ever fall now—without our sofa cushions!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, “something sure will happen!” And then, all of a sudden, a bad bumble-bee came along, and, with his sharp stinger, he made holes in the toy balloons of Uncle Wiggily’s airship, just as a bad wasp once did. Down the airship began to fall, faster and faster.
“Oh, if we hit the ground now, with no soft sofa cushions to sit on, we shall surely be hurt!” cried Uncle Wiggily. “What shall I do?”
“I know,” cried Lulu Wibblewobble, the brave duck girl. “I will flap my wings very hard, just as I did in my school examinations to-day, and that will make us fall more slowly, so we will not strike the ground so hard.”
“Please do!” cried Uncle Wiggily. And Lulu did. Faster and faster she flapped her wings, beating the air with them, and this kept up the airship, just as a bird keeps itself up, and made it fall more and more slowly and gently.
“Look out!” cried the rabbit gentleman, peeping over the side of the clothes basket. “We are going to bump!”