Everyone I know, including Robert the Bear, thinks I am Nina the Balloon, the happy little helium balloon who drifts around tied to the hands of lovely little children. They see me bobbing about everywhere and imagine they know all about me, but nobody knows I am Nina the Secret Dream.
The truth is I have a great longing to be free, to float up, up, forever floating over trees, and rivers, and mountains. It sounds so nice, just to rise softly in the air and travel along without a worry in the world.
“When are you going to come and play with us?” I often hear the children say. But I know if I were to fly away at once no one would care to play with me. They would all complain: “What a horrid balloon! She won’t keep up with us!” Then my happy dream would be at an end, for everyone would burst me, and that would hurt very much. The worst of it is I can only carry out my scheme on very windy days; otherwise my string would get tangled in the twigs of the trees, or the chimney-pots, or something, so that I should never get anywhere.
But don’t think there isn’t a string tied to me. There it is, all right, with a brown paper bag tied on the end filled with sand. That drags me down and keeps me steady on calm days, but when the wind blows strongly—oh, it is lovely! The paper bag unstrings itself without my doing a thing, and the empty string trails along the ground. Then off I float high in the air, and away I go, till I see something nice I want to look at or to dive down to.
There was a strong gale one day, but, strangely enough, when the storm was at its height, I saw a baby looking out of an open window on the third floor of a large house close to a park where I was flying about.
“How nice he would look bouncing up into the sky!” I thought. So instead of diving down with all my might, as I usually do, I floated up to him and said, “Cut my string and I’ll bash into the tree across the street.” That’s the way balloons always speak—“bash!” “Thump!” “Bang!”—like big men, you know, not at all like the pretty, gentle words we little balloons want to use.
“But I want plenty of room,” I went on, “in case I should go up the hill through the park and bounce about among the trees.”
Baby was most obedient, and soon I was free. Before I knew where I was, I found myself tumbling along the street in the most curious manner. You might have thought it was a dog that had been slipping about, instead of a high-spirited balloon.
“Oh!” I thought, “Is this the end of my balloon voyage?”
But it was only just beginning, for I soon went to sleep in the park, which was quite empty, as everybody else had gone home.
In the morning I woke up feeling rather stiff.
“I know what I want!” I exclaimed, and I began to bounce about and swing from side to side till I broke off a nice green twig from a tree. Then I hitched my string to the little ball, which was hopping about on the grass, and off I went. It was so nice being a balloon that I felt full of play-fellows.
“Don’t they want to play with me?” I thought. So wherever I saw a balloon, green, or blue, or red, or yellow, I flew to it and tied on the other end of my string till I heard the pop of something bursting behind me. Sometimes it was my little friend, at other times one of the others.
When I came to four black balloons, one after the other, stuck at the four corners of a house, then I knew I was at home.
I had seen everything, even the great clock in the temple before I got back again. It was nearly one.
“How quickly the time has gone!” I thought in a dream.
Then I opened my eyes and saw the old brown paper bag with sand in it strapping on my feet like a pair of slippers, so as to be ready if the wind blew too hard when I was far off. It was fortunate my little plan of breaking it so easily, Heaven knows how, waited till even my toy-of-a-bear was wide awake.
I barely greeted him. You see, he never has a dream, so he couldn’t understand.
I waited till Robert’s mouth was wide open, and then I slipped the paper bag, as cleverly as itself could have done it, on to his outstretched paw. I thought that of all things I could find as a present for him!
“Now go and give this to little Roger,” I whispered, blowing a kiss to him.
“You wonderful balloon!” replied Robert.
“Look here,” I laughed. “Look here!” and I pointed upward.
Robert raised his astonished eyes. Then I slipped the string from my paws (no colors I have seen match Robert’s fur, so I had a bad fight to get free). He was not sorry to part with me; he wanted to fulfill his commission, which he thought a bad joke, and not a pleasant one, considering who the recipient was.
Soon Crescent returned, and with the Bluebottle Trophy of Beauty in her hand marched into Robert’s apartment. I thought I was dreaming again; in a flash I cut my string, and just like that I was free of the other toy. Now, if Nina the Balloon could help it, Nina the Secret Dream would open windows.
“What a lovely free feeling I have!” I thought, gazing down at the obedient toys and at the opposite rich green trees from the top of the writing-table. It was the first time my new foot brought me off stiffly navigating the air. But I went to S-S-R-R-R, I forgot my manners, I knew well the awful propensities of my race; I saw what I wanted, and in I went, wrenching off the plate of hard chocolate—and what did I want it for? That was Robert’s doings, of course.
I peeped with the expected success, and all about me poured a lovely fragrance of chocolate, the fragrance I had kept dreaming of. I took a great big nibble off all my teeth all at once. It was a dark fountain of longing dreams of childhood and teaching that melted before the Stefanian sunbeam floating painfully about with me, so that I was not sure whether it was not the sun which had begun to melt me.
Oh, one thought! Hope yo hes wife me by or not, I must go besieging like Robert the Bear.