to stop the ache--for the
Telephone Boy was growing very fast indeed, in spite of his poverty, and
couldn't seem to stop growing somehow, although he said to himself every
day that it was perfectly brutal of him to keep on that way when his
mother had so many mouths to feed.

Well, well, the tightness of the air got worse. Every one was cross at
dinner and complained of feeling tired afterward, and of wanting to go
to bed. For all of that it was not to get to sleep, and the children
tossed and tumbled for a long time before they put their little hands in
the big, soft shadowy clasp of the Sandman, and trooped away after him
to the happy town of sleep.

It seemed to the flat children that they had been asleep but a few
moments when there came a terrible burst of wind that shook even that
great house to its foundations. Actually, as they sat up in bed and
called to their parents or their nurses, their voices seemed smothered
with roar. Could it be that the wind was a great wild beast with a
hundred tongues which licked at the roof of the building? And how many
voices must it have to bellow as it did?

Sounds of falling glass, of breaking shutters, of crashing chimneys
greeted their ears--not that they knew what all these sounds meant. They
only knew that it seemed as if the end of the world had come. Ernest,
miserable as he was, wondered if the Telephone Boy had gotten safely
home, or if he were alone in the draughty room in the basement; and
Roderick hugged his big brother, who slept with him and said, "Now I lay
me," three times running, as fast as ever his tongue would say it.

After a terrible time the wind settled down into a steady howl like a
hungry wolf, and the children went to sleep, worn out with fright and
conscious that the bedclothes could not keep out the cold.

Dawn came. The children awoke, shivering. They sat up in bed and looked
about them--yes, they did, the whole twenty-six of them in their
different apartments and their different homes.

And what do you suppose they saw--what do you suppose the twenty-six
flat children saw as they looked about them?

Why, stockings, stuffed full, and trees hung full, and boxes packed
full! Yes, they did! It was Christmas morning, and the bells were
ringing, and all the little flat children were laughing, for Santa Claus
had come! He had really come! In the wind and wild weather, while the
tongues of the wind licked hungrily at the roof, while the wind howled