what the Polar Bear was going to do some of them
might have noticed a small, dark figure stealing up outside the workshop
of Santa Claus, and stopping beneath one of the ice windows.

This little figure was that of an Eskimo boy--the same little chap, all
dressed in sealskin and fur, who had looked in and almost reached
through the window to take out the Plush Bear when he had interrupted
the toys in the midst of their snowball fight.

"Ah, now is my chance!" murmured the little Eskimo boy, as he stepped
softly over the snow, coming nearer and nearer to the workshop of Santa
Claus. "If I can open a window I'll take out that Plush Bear, cart him
off to the igloo, and have a lot of fun."

The Eskimo boy lived with his father and mother in a house made of
blocks of snow and ice. This house was called an "igloo," and it takes
its name from the house built by the seals in the far North. The Eskimos
build their houses the same shape as the houses made in the ice by the
seals. If you cut an orange or an apple in half, and put the flat side
down on a table, you will see exactly how an Eskimo igloo is shaped.

"Oh, if I can only get the Plush Bear!" thought the Eskimo boy, as he
stepped softly nearer and nearer to the workshop of Santa Claus.

It was not very dark in North Pole Land just then. Though the sun had
gone down, and the long winter had set in, still there were the
Northern Lights, which glowed and flickered in the sky and made enough
of a gleam for the Eskimo boy to see his way over the snow. The snow,
too, helped to make it less dark.

Ever since he had seen the Plush Bear through the window of Santa Claus'
workshop that day, the Eskimo boy had wanted the plaything. So after his
supper of seal fat and blubber, with a piece of tallow candle, which was
to him what candy is to you, the boy, well wrapped in fur, started out
from his igloo.

All this while, or at least after Santa Claus and his men had gone, the
Plush Bear and the other toys were having fun among themselves. As I
have told you, the Polar Bear was getting ready to turn somersaults to
amuse the other toys.

"Watch me now!" cried the Polar Bear, as he leaned over and got ready to
stand on his head.

"Say, why don't you turn some somersaults?" the Flannel Pig asked of
the Plush Bear.

"Maybe I will after he gets through," the Plush Bear answered.

The Eskimo boy was now at one of the windows of the shop--a window which
had for a pane a clear she