ng from
rafters for the varnish to dry, crinkly yellow segments of balloons
heaped near a sewing-machine that was stitching them into spheres, rows
of hot-air balloons from past seasons ranged along on shelves in tight
bundles, models of flying-machines, all kinds of parachutes, including
one in red, white, and blue, made to take up a dog, and in various dusty
corners photographs of Leo Stevens walking a tight rope, Leo Stevens
rising to the clouds over waving multitudes, Leo Stevens (and his big
umbrella) soaring down to earth from the height of twenty steeples,
swinging with dancing-master grace from the bar of his trapeze. I liked
this place for the good-natured faces of "Kid" Benjamin, who was
scooping cold salmon out of a can when I came in, and a young lady with
long eyelashes, who was running the machine.

Leo Stevens was out, said this young lady; he was seeing some patent
lawyers about his new air-ship, but she was Mrs. Stevens, and could she
do anything for me? I asked various questions, and she answered them
from a wide practical knowledge. She had made dozens of balloons and
parachutes--yes, and used them, too. It was "Kid" Benjamin who offered
this latter information, remarking that she was "grand on a parachute."

Mrs. Stevens smiled, and explained that she had never made an ascension
in her life until the previous summer, and then only because her husband
was in a fix through the failure of another woman to appear. A balloon
race had been advertised between two lady aeronauts, and when the time
came one of them, Miss Nina Madison, was missing. Rather than have the
thing a failure and a big crowd disappointed, Mrs. Stevens agreed to go
up. She would take Miss Nina's place and race the professional. And she
did it, and she won the race.

"You see," she said, "I didn't feel nervous as another woman might,
because I'd been living with balloons for years. Besides they hitched me
fast to the parachute ropes so I couldn't have fallen if I'd wanted to.
It was lovely going up; everybody said we made a beautiful ascension,
and the two balloons kept so close together that the other lady and I
were talking all the way. At last, when we were up about three thousand
feet, she called out that my balloon was settling and for me to cut. But
I called back: 'Cut yourself,' and, sure enough, she did in a minute,
and I watched her parachute open out and sink and get smaller and
smaller, until she reached the ground. A few m