[Illustration: DIDN'T LOOK AS IF SHE BELONGED TO THE REST OF OUR CROWD]
"Aunt Melissy said she would take charge of the lunch-basket and lead the way, and she was all dressed up and carried an umbrella, and didn't look much as if she belonged to the rest of our crowd.
"It was pretty early when we started, for it was getting dangerous to camp out in that section, and we wanted to get as far as we could the first day, though we didn't any of us have any idea then how long a trip we _would_ make that day, nor of the way we were going to make it. Nobody could guess a guess like that, even if he was the best guesser in the world and made his living that way."
Mr. 'Possum stopped to light his pipe again, and said that if anybody wanted a chance to guess how far they went that first day and how they travelled, they could guess now. But the Hollow Tree People said they didn't want to guess, and they did want Mr. 'Possum to go ahead and tell them about it.
"Well," said Mr. 'Possum, "we travelled fifty miles that first day, and we travelled it in less than two hours."
"Fifty miles in two hours!" said all the Hollow Tree People. And Jack Rabbit said:
"Why, a menagerie like that couldn't travel fifty miles in two years!"
"But we did, though," said Mr. 'Possum; "we travelled it in a balloon."
"Well, not exactly in a balloon, but _with_ a balloon. It happened just as I'm going to tell you.
"We went along pretty well until we got to the Wide Grass Lands, though Aunt Melissy scolded Uncle Silas a good deal because he got behind and didn't stand up in a nice stylish way with all the things he had to carry, and she used her umbrella once on the hired man because he dropped the clock.
"When we got out to the Wide Grass Lands there was a high east wind blowing, getting ready for a storm, and when we got on top of a little grassy hill close to the Wide Blue Water it blew Uncle Silas and the hired man so they could hardly stand up, and it turned Aunt Melissy's umbrella wrong side out, which made her mad, and she said that it was Uncle Silas's fault and mine, and that she had never wanted to move anyway.
"But just then one of my little cousins looked up in the sky and said, 'Oh, look at that funny bird!' and we all looked up, and there was a great big long bag of a thing coming right toward us, not very high up, and Uncle Silas spoke up and said 'That's a balloon,' for Uncle Silas had seen one in town when he was there visiting Cousin Glenwood, and the hired man, too. Then while we were all standing there watching it, we saw that there was a long rope that hung from the balloon most to the ground, and that it had something tied to the end of it (a big iron thing with a lot of hooks on it), and that it was swooping down straight toward us.