“It’s as plain as a monkey on a hand-organ,” said the Telephone Boy to the attendants at his salon in the basement, “that there ain’t to be no Christmas for we—­no, not for we!”

Had not Dorothy produced, at this junction, from the folds of her fluffy silken skirts several substantial sticks of gum, there is no saying to what depths of discouragement the flat children would have fallen!

About six o’clock it seemed as if the children would smother for lack of air!  It was very peculiar.  Even the janitor noticed it.  He spoke about it to Kara at the head of the back stairs, and she held her hand so as to let him see the new silver ring on her fourth finger, and he let go of the rope on the elevator on which he was standing and dropped to the bottom of the shaft, so that Kara sent up a wild hallo of alarm.  But the janitor emerged as melancholy and unruffled as ever, only looking at his watch to see if it had been stopped by the concussion.

The Telephone Boy, who usually got a bit of something hot sent down to him from one of the tables, owing to the fact that he never ate any meal save breakfast at home, was quite forgotten on this day, and dined off two russet apples, and drew up his belt 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.