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.

"Uncle Silas called out as loud as he could, 'That's the anchor! Look
out!' but it was too late to look out, for it was coming as fast as the
wind blew the balloon, and Uncle Silas and the hired man being loaded
with the things couldn't move very quick, and the rest of us were too
scared to know which way to jump, and down came that thing right among
us, and I saw it catch among Uncle Silas's furniture and the hired
man's, and I heard Uncle Silas say, 'Grab hold, all of you' and we all
did, some one way and some another, and away we went.

"Well, it was certainly very curious how we all were lucky enough to get
hold of that anchor, with all our bundles and things; but of course we
could do it better than if we had not been given those nice useful tails
which belong to our family. I had hold that way, and some of the others
did, too. Uncle Silas didn't need to hold on at all, for some of the
furniture was tied to him, and he just sat back in a chair that was hung
on behind and took it easy, though he did drop some of his things when
he first got aboard, and