tolerable near by, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he
was close back of her the child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she
heard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for
the kid and snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged Jim, and
then snatched off a gold chain and hung it around Jim's neck, and hugged
him again, and jerked up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all
the time; and Jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we
was back up in the sky and the woman was staring up, with the back of her
head between her shoulders and the child with its arms locked around her
neck. And there she stood, as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in
the sky.



CHAPTER VII. TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA

"NOON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his
feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the
difference didn't amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north
of us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the
weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles
north, too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.

Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the
world, unless it might be some kinds of birds--a wild pigeon, maybe, or a
railroad.

But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a
hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in
the world that could do that--except one, and that was a flea.