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 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!

XX.  THE LEGEND OF BABOUSCKA*

From “The Children’s Hour,” published by the Milton Bradley Co.

ADAPTED FROM THE RUSSIAN