Hooray!" the children cheered, watching him fly through the air.
They clapped their hands because it was such fun to watch him, and because they were happy to see him in such a fix.
The children had always envied the balloon man.
Envy is a bad thing, but they couldn't help it.
The red, blue and yellow balloons were magnificent.
Each child wished he had one.
The balloon man had a huge bunch of them, but miracles don't usually happen.
Never, not even once, did he give the most obedient boy or the neatest girl a single balloon: neither a red one, nor a blue one, nor a yellow one.
Now he had been punished for being so mean.
He was flying over the town, hanging on to the strings of his balloons for dear-life.
They looked like a bunch of magic grapes flying high up in the blue sky.
"Help!" the balloon man yelled, though he had no hope of help coming, and kicked wildly.
He had on a pair of straw slippers that were too big for him.
Everything was all right as long as his feet were on the ground.
To keep his slippers from falling off, he used to drag his feet along like a very lazy person.
But now, when he was up in the air, he couldn't very well drag his feet on nothing.
"What the devil!" he muttered.
The wind tossed the bunch of balloons this way and that.
One slipper finally fell off.
"Look!
It's a peanut!
A peanut!" the children cried from below.
And the falling slipper really did look like a peanut.
A dancing master was passing by just then.
He was very elegant.
He was tall, with thin legs and a small head and looked like a violin or a grasshopper.
His delicate ears, used to the sad sounds of a flute and the soft words spoken by dancers, could not stand the loud, happy shrieks of the children.
"Stop shouting!" he said angrily. "You should never shout so loud!
If you want to express your joy, use beautiful, melodious words such as...."
He struck a pose, but had no time to tell them what sort of words they should use.
For, like all dancing masters, he was in the habit of looking at the ground and at people's feet.
Alas!
He did not see what was happening above.
The balloon man's slipper fell right on his head.
Since his head was rather small, the large straw slipper fitted it like a hat.
Then the elegant dancing master bellowed like a cow.
The slipper covered half his face.
The children nearly burst from laughing.
"Ha-ha-ha!
Ha-ha-ha!"
The dancing master One-Two-Three Does not look up like you or me.
He can't distinguish right from wrong, His voice is shrill, his nose is long. It serves him right, just look at that! He got a straw shoe for a hat!
This is what the boys sang as they sat on a fence, ready to jump down on the other side and run away at a moment's notice.
"Oh!" moaned the dancing master. "Oh, how terrible this is!
If only it were a dancing slipper, and not this horrid old boot!"
In the end, the dancing master was arrested.
"My good man," the officer said, "your appearance is disgusting.
You're disturbing the peace.
Such things should never be done and especially not in troubled times like these."
The dancing master wrung his hands.