“I wouldn’t want to be up there in his shoes, by God!” yelled their father. Fearfully, they twisted their necks to look back at the balloon which was being driven back by the wind in a circle, though when the lightning flashed again they could see the balloon-man’s upraised arms as if he were calling on dark spirits for more terror. Looking back as the galloping horse bore them to the city pavements, they saw the man in the balloon lost in black clouds, sailing higher and higher, roaring prophecies in thunder until he was lost in black sky.

“We’ll make it!” their mother called out, for the London Junction signs could be seen as the first big drops began to fall. A railroad ran down the middle of the main street like a streetcar track, and they had to pass a switching yard filled with snorting engines and freight cars which frightened their horse even more. They drove down a wide pavement and dashed in a driveway just as the torrent came. They drove straight into the barn and their father lifted them out on the straw-covered floor.

“Run right in the back door—quick!”

They had no time to look at Aunt Lois’s house beyond their fleeting pride in its bigness, but scurried under the grape arbor, through the woodshed and in the kitchen door, which welcomed them with the smell of frying chicken and cake-baking and lights as bright as a church. Aunt Lois came running from the front of the house in a white muslin dress, looking so much like a good angel that they ran to her desperately. She hugged them and they began to cry simultaneously into her lap.

“Why, you poor babies! The storm scared you, didn’t it?” Aunt Lois soothed them, drying their tears with her apron.

“No, it wasn’t the storm, it was the man in the balloon,” whimpered Marcia, still shivering. She buried her moist face in her aunt’s soft neck. “Don’t let the man in the balloon get us! Please! Please!”

2

EVERY NIGHT IN LONDON Junction Lena cried and sometimes their mother rocked her in her arms, big girl that she was, and sang to her. Sometimes she cried, too, leaning over to hide her tears on Lena’s yellow curls, and sometimes this sniffling woke up the sensitive Florrie who would set up a great sympathetic bellow and have to be taken up, too. Marcia stood in front of this emotional spectacle, puzzled and unmoved.

“What’s Lena bawling about?” she asked repeatedly, and her mother always answered, “She’s homesick for the old house on Peach Street.”

Marcia tried in vain to understand. Lena had been as excited as she herself had been to come to London Junction. All right, now they were here. They had their wish, didn’t they? Just as they’d made it so often on loads of hay and falling stars. But instead of being happy Lena had to bawl. It didn’t make sense. Mama cried, too. Florrie always cried, so that didn’t count.