You know jolly old St. Nicholas lets folks do that so he won’t be bothered so much when he is so busy.  He has so much to do, arranging about the presents that are to go in the stockings and down the chimneys, that if he was interfered with, or talked to too much, he’d never get done.

So he allows a lot of make-believe Santa Clauses to go around the streets and in stores, making the children as happy as they can.  But they are not the real ones, only make-believes, though some of them are very nice.  Then the real Santa Claus has his time to himself.

And Floppy and Curly were not a bit sad that they had given up their two chief toys, as I told you in the story last night, to the poor boy and the lame boy.

Well, in a little while, not so very long, Flop Ear got to the store, and he bought the cake of chocolate for his mother.

“And here is something for yourself,” said the store man to the piggie boy, and he gave him a cookie, with caraway seeds and little candies on the top.

Then Flop Ear was glad he had gone to the store, and he was walking along, nibbling on the cookie, and saving a bit for his brother and Baby Pinky, his sister, when, all at once he heard a voice say: 

“Here, little piggie boy, I want you!”

He looked all around, thinking it might be the fuzzy wolf or the bad skillery-scalery alligator, but all he saw was good kind Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy.

“Oh, I beg your pardon for thinking you were some one else,” said Flop Ear.  “I took you for a wolf.  What can I do for you?”

“I have dropped my ball of yarn, from which I was knitting a pair of mittens for Sammie Littletail,” said the kind muskrat.  “The ball dropped in the dirt and I can’t find it.  I wonder if you could?”

So Flop Ear hurried over to the rabbit house, where Nurse Jane lived; she was the only one at home that day.  And, by rooting around in the dirt with his rubbery-ubbery nose, Flop Ear soon found the ball of yarn.

“Oh, how smart you are!” exclaimed Nurse Jane.  “And, as a little present to you I am going to give you a pair of stockings that I knitted myself.  You can hang them up for Santa Claus on Christmas.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried Flop Ear, as he took the stockings, which were very big.  Far too big they were for him, but he was too polite to say so.  And he thought, in case he couldn’t wear them, that it was all the better to have them big for Christmas, since Santa Claus could put so much more in them.

Then Flop Ear, with the stockings, and the cake of chocolate, having helped Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy, started for home.  And on the way he passed a place where there were a lot of dried leaves, and he thought to himself: 

“I’ll fill one of the stockings with dried leaves and take them home.  They will make a good bed for Baby Pinky’s doll,” and so he did fill one of the big stockings with leaves.

Then he went on a little further, carrying the one empty stocking and the one filled with leaves, which was almost as large as Flop Ear himself.