On a sunny day in a lovely, sunny meadow, Tina the Turtle was dozing under her favorite tree. She had just fallen asleep when something woke her up; not a noise, but a great shadow came between her and the bright sunshine. She opened her eyes and sat up to see what it could be.
There, right above her, was something she had never seen before. It was a big balloon, and a little girl was sitting in a chair at the end of the rope, hanging down from the balloon! The little girl waved to Tina, and Tina waved back. Then she called out, “Where are you going, and how did you get up there?”
“I don’t know how I got up here,” said the little girl. “I was playing with this balloon, holding the rope, when suddenly my foot slipped. I lost my balance and up I floated. I was in the air a long time before my chair made the balloon go down near your tree. But now it’s starting to rise again.”
Sure enough, up went the big balloon, and the little girl was floating and crying at the end of the rope once more, while the wind was carrying her away from the meadow.
Tina jumped up and down in excitement. “Oh dear!” she cried. “What can I do? What can I do? I must save that little girl! But how can I?”
Just then, Ollie the Owl flew down from his old hollow tree and said, “What is the matter, Tina? You seem to be in great trouble about someone.”
“Oh, Ollie!” exclaimed Tina. “Look up there! A little girl is sailing away in that balloon, and I’m afraid she’ll never come down!”
“That is too bad,” said Ollie, “but I am sure we can rescue her if we only use our heads. I will think as hard as ever I can, and you may do the same. Off you go; and we will meet here by this old tree three hours later when I call you.”
So saying, Ollie flew up to a high branch, and Tina started off on a more or less wandering course to see what she could discover to help the little girl.
She wandered down the brook that flowed close to a little house by the river out of which a large lumber boat was just sailing; then turned and crossed a meadow, came to a little hill, and kept going until she met a flock of cows. To her, when without any tether, they were laughing and lowing.
“Why don’t you fly up and rescue the little girl in a balloon that’s floating along far up in the sky?” said one cow. “If those farmers had cut down the trees that grow at the edge of the woods instead of leaving stubs, we could easily have stepped from the ends of the stubs right up to the balloon, and her chair, too.”
“The squirrels are flying in and out of the trees all the time. They could run along the branch of trees,” shouted a horse; her head was almost as high as the trees themselves. “If it wasn’t for the railway trains running through the trees, they would have saved her long ago.”
“The cattle guard has brought me to a full stop. Legs have to creep into cattle guards, just as small boats have to creep under the iron bridges across the Mississippi,” remarked the horse.
Tina the Turtle knew that she could not do anything herself alone, and hoped this second meeting would make Ollie grow wise as well as full of good intentions. Before she got home, she met an evergreen tree filled with blue jays owning to the power her legs gave her to creep beneath the trees. As they all wanted to help, they too scattered news thinking they might get the little girl home.
When she reached the old oak tree three hours later, she was very much out of breath, while Ollie, who had only to sit still, looked cool as ever.
“You seem to be very much out of breath,” said he. “Well, Tina, I haven’t been able to think of a single thing. Both my head and my head were too full of the heat of the sun to do any good. It is no use for us to try together.”
“I am sure I can do it alone,” said Tina, “but you will have to ask a person first who doesn’t live in the forest. So you fly up over to that house by the river, and when you see a man come out, hoot to him as you did to me. He will surely come where you want to speak to him.”
Ollie did as he was told; and a farmer came out of the house, held a short fishing rod under his arm, and was ready to go off to the river behind his barn.
“Mr. Farmer,” hooted Ollie, “a little girl in a balloon is floating away all over your cornfield. If you don’t help her, she’ll float far away, and may fall and hurt herself in an awful way I am afraid!”
“Where do you say she is?” asked the man, staring; and Ollie hooted all about the little girl.
“Oh! I see her above that big pole,” continued the farmer, looking through his fishing pole. “While I can do nothing for her or myself quite yet. I’ll come later on when I finish my work.”
Soon she saw him mounting his horse. He rode to the end of the distant cornfield, stopped, got off, and took off all the frying pains and butcher knives and every other piece of metal that was huddled up in the pocket of his overalls, and fastened the pocket up again. Then he let the horse run free, and took hold of one end of a big old iron wire that was tied to the basket of the balloon. The wire was hanging down after the rope had been pulled tight for a long while.
“Aha!” cried the man when he got hold of the wire. It was for a long time in two or three trees, but at last it gave way. Now if you tangle your overalls or a horn that somebody had being tooting down below, my old fragments had stuck to other pieces before I bought it, they are in some luck,” remarked the man when he had gone to the end of the brown wire, missing all likeness his overalls instead.
The little girl was rescued from the balloon, and another man climbed up a little ladder on the duck house door and grasped her to steady herself, and in the end right on a dry place led her after her dress got thoroughly shaken.
“Back! Back! Can’t you smell the mess in the river?” exclaimed the farmer scoldingly. “Instead of carrying her back on the after another fair breeze carries you right home, you must go and pardon Miss Cuckoo lady from getting your old foot soaking.”
Besides Ollie the Owl and Tina the Turtle, everyone was there who was met on the way through the forest, and all the steps and jumps, which might otherwise have finished Mrs. Cow hastily, were only a joke.
How ashamed the little girl was, who had most strangely now fed half fish alone, and most strangely learned a second time with her little tail of a milksore.
But all were pleased she was to be saved, even in that way; and when she got home everyone cheered.
“Tina did it,” cried the animals in the forest, with joyful cries. “Ollie said right long since she would be sure to think of something—and she has!”
The last request of the farmer who left to go home beside his wife was that the flocks might not live that Cuckoo would lay her egg and gave up all sighting she had hold of it, provided they did no act which, while getting into anybody’s way, would be anything Miss Cuckoo would do.
“But I helped that, when I was here missing you all inward she was!” sighed she, wishing at the same time where to sign the swing she missed this and that chance again.
Cried she, mad, crushed parts. Part of her right forefoot and all her went to everyone. One said that the basket she had was forgettables only being at the height at which her leg. The smartest told one another only a baby could go down if once said his mother by punching it in a corner and turning the bottle upside down.