and were so delighted with the music they
made that they kept prancing up and down to make the bells ring.

Claus now seated himself in the sledge, drew a warm robe over his knees
and his fur cap over his ears, and cracked his long whip as a signal to
start.

Instantly the ten leaped forward and were away like the wind, while
jolly Claus laughed gleefully to see them run and shouted a song in his
big, hearty voice:

"With a ho, ho, ho!
And a ha, ha, ha!
And a ho, ho, ha, ha, hee!
Now away we go
O'er the frozen snow,
As merry as we can be!

There are many joys
In our load of toys,
As many a child will know;
We'll scatter them wide
On our wild night ride
O'er the crisp and sparkling snow!"

Now it was on this same Christmas Eve that little Margot and her
brother Dick and her cousins Ned and Sara, who were visiting at
Margot's house, came in from making a snow man, with their clothes
damp, their mittens dripping and their shoes and stockings wet through
and through. They were not scolded, for Margot's mother knew the snow
was melting, but they were sent early to bed that their clothes might
be hung over chairs to dry. The shoes were placed on the red tiles of
the hearth, where the heat from the hot embers would strike them, and
the stockings were carefully hung in a row by the chimney, directly
over the fireplace. That was the reason Santa Claus noticed them when
he came down the chimney that night and all the household were fast
asleep. He was in a tremendous hurry and seeing the stockings all
belonged to children he quickly stuffed his toys into them and dashed
up the chimney again, appearing on the roof so suddenly that the
reindeer were astonished at his agility.

"I wish they would all hang up their stockings," he thought, as he
drove to the next chimney. "It would save me a lot of time and I could
then visit more children before daybreak."

When Margot and Dick and Ned and Sara jumped out of bed next morning
and ran downstairs to get their stockings from the fireplace they were
filled with delight to find the toys from Santa Claus inside them. In
face, I think they found more presents in their stockings than any
other children of that city had received, for Santa Claus was in a
hurry and did not stop to count the toys.

Of course they told all their little friends about it, and of course
every one of them decided to hang his own stockings