“Balloon?  I don’t see any balloon!” cried Mrs. Bunker.  She thought, perhaps, as sometimes did happen, a balloonist from a neighboring fairground might have gone up, giving an exhibition as was often the case in the Fall.  But all the balloons she saw were the toys Russ and Laddie had tied to the fence.

“Where is the balloon, and what do you mean by pulling Mun Bun up in the basket that way?” she asked.

“Mun Bun’s in the balloon!” cried Russ.

“We got him up, but we can’t get him down,” added Laddie.  “The rope’s stuck.”

And that is just what had happened.  I think you can guess the kind of game Russ and Laddie had been playing when the accident happened?  They had tied the clothes basket to the rope running over the wheel.  The pulley had been used when Mr. Bunker kept a horse, for pulling the hay up from the ground to the second story of the barn.

Then, with the basket tied to the rope, Laddie and Russ had taken turns pulling one another up.  The rope went around several pulleys, or wheels, instead of one, and this made it easy for even a small boy, by pulling on the loose end, to lift up quite a weight.  So it was not hard for Russ to pull Laddie in the basket up to the little door of the hay-loft.  Laddie could not have pulled Russ up, if Russ, himself, had not taken hold of the rope and pulled also.  But they had lots of good times, and they pretended they were going up and down in a balloon.

Then along came Mun Bun.

“I want to play, too!” he cried.

“We’ll pull him up!” said Russ.  “He’s light and little, and we can pull him up fast!”

So Mun Bun got into the clothes basket, and Russ and Laddie, hauling on the rope, pulled him up and let him come down quite swiftly.

“Oh, it’s fun!” laughed Mun Bun.  “I like the balloon!”

And it was fun, until the accident happened.  Then, in some way, the rope became caught in one of the wheels, and when Mun Bun was half-way between the ground and the second story of the barn, there he stuck!

“We’d better holler for mother!” said Laddie, as Mun Bun, looking over the edge of the basket, began to cry.

“Maybe we can get him down ourselves,” said Russ.  “Pull some more.”

He and Laddie pulled as hard as they could.  But still Mun Bun was stuck in the “balloon.”

“I want to get down!  I want to get down!” he cried.

Then Laddie and Russ became frightened and shouted for their mother.

“Oh, you poor, dear little boy!” said Mrs. Bunker, as she saw what the matter was.  “Don’t be afraid now.  I’ll soon get you down.”

She looked at the rope, saw where it was twisted so it would not run easily over the pulley wheels.  Then she untwisted it, and the basket could come down, with Mun Bun in it.

“I don’t like that old balloon!” he said, tears in his eyes.

“Well, Laddie and Russ mustn’t put you in again,” said his mother.  “Don’t cry any more.  You’re all right.”