like a hungry wolf, he had crept in somehow and laughing, no doubt, and
chuckling, without question, he had filled the stockings and the trees
and the boxes! Dear me, dear me, but it was a happy time! It makes me
out of breath to think what a happy time it was, and how surprised the
flat children were, and how they wondered how it could ever have
happened.

But they found out, of course! It happened in the simplest way! Every
skylight in the place was blown off and away, and that was how the wind
howled so, and how the bedclothes would not keep the children warm, and
how Santa Claus got in. The wind corkscrewed down into these holes, and
the reckless children with their drums and dolls, their guns and toy
dishes, danced around in the maelstrom and sang:

"Here's where Santa Claus came!
This is how he got in--
We should count it a sin
Yes, count it a shame,
If it hurt when he fell on the floor."

Roderick's sister, who was clever for a child of her age, and who had
read Monte Cristo ten times, though she was only eleven, wrote this
poem, which every one thought very fine.

And of course all the parents thought and said that Santa Claus must
have jumped down the skylights. By noon there were other skylights put
in, and not a sign left of the way he made his entrance--not that the
way mattered a bit, no, not a bit.

Perhaps you think the Telephone Boy didn't get anything! Maybe you
imagine that Santa Claus didn't get down that far. But you are mistaken.
The shaft below one of the skylights went away to the bottom of the
building, and it stands to reason that the old fellow must have fallen
way through. At any rate there was a copy of "Tom Sawyer," and a whole
plum pudding, and a number of other things, more useful but not so
interesting, found down in the chilly basement room. There were, indeed.

In closing it is only proper to mention that Kara Johnson crocheted a
white silk four-in-hand necktie for Carl Carlsen, the janitor--and the
janitor smiled!

FOOTNOTE:

[N] From "Ickery Ann and Other Girls and Boys," by Ella W. Peattie
Copyright, 1898, by Herbert S. Stone & Co., Duffield & Co., successors.

XXII

THE LEGEND OF BABOUSCKA[O]

ADAPTED FROM THE RUSSIAN

IT WAS the night the dear Christ-Child came to Bethlehem. In a country
far away from Him, an old, old woman named Babouscka sat in her snug
little house by her warm fire. The wind was