‘Yes,’ nodded the Little Brown Boy with a sniff, ‘and I am going to put away my toys every night after this. I promise you, Santa Claus. I promise I will.’
‘Good!’ answered Santa Claus heartily. ‘Good! Your name is still in the Book. It isn’t crossed off yet. See for yourself.’
And there, in Santa Claus’s own Book of Good Children, the Little Brown Boy, leaning from Santa Claus’s knee, saw his name written as plain as plain could be.
‘Why don’t you take him up to see the toys?’ suggested Santa Claus to his Brownies, who were now smiling and nodding at one another and hopping about.
So upstairs they went to a great room filled to every corner with toys very much like those the Little Brown Boy had at home.
At their first glimpse of the Little Brown Boy, the toys became excited, so excited that the Little Brown Boy held fast to the Brownies’ hands. For the toys began to call out and all talk at once and tell the Little Brown Boy just how toys felt when they were left lying on the floor at night.
‘We want to rest in our own stable and not lie out in the cold,’ whinnied the horses, stamping their feet and tossing their heads as they spoke.
‘We like to be packed neatly in our box,’ said the tin soldiers, giving the Little Brown Boy a fine salute. ‘It is so untidy and unlike a soldier to lie about on the floor.’
‘We can’t drive straight and with speed to a fire,’ spoke out the firemen, growing red in the face, ‘unless our fire-engines are placed in a row on the shelf. You must understand how that is yourself.’
The Little Brown Boy nodded. He did begin to understand.