(Why aren’t there more balloons?)
Furthermore, a kind of pallor settled over the balloon. It just wasn’t having a very good day. First, there’d been that near incident with the porcupine, then the caroming bin lid, and finally, the heart-stopping (if it had one) wind-ride through the branches of that oak tree. Somehow its string hadn’t gotten tangled in branches. The balloon would have breathed a sigh of relief, only no lungs.
Virginia Woolf, in a really frankly quite tasteless display of foreshadowing, was skipping rocks on a pond. Her fingers were stained with ink, and it didn’t or wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to tell what she’d been doing with her morning (i.e., something with ink). The balloon settled gently down in the center of the pond. And Virginia Woolf, why, she just waded right into the pond to go get it. Some ducks quaffled quietly.
Balloon in hand, Virginia Woolf waded back to shore, skirt wet up past her knees, and handed the balloon to young Quentin Bell, who scampered off pretty quick with it. She smiled, and so did the balloon, that is, if it could have.
Virginia Woolf went on skipping rocks on the pond. Later on, the balloon popped somehow. But that’s ok. It was only a balloon, after all.