‘No, I never heard of a tantrum,’ said Lady Arabella.
‘Well, a tantrum is this,’ explained Mischief, his face very sober but his eyes twinkling with fun. ‘You want your own way, and you dance up and down and scream and cry and sometimes you lie on the floor and kick. Now, Lady Arabella, do you think you could have a tantrum?’ asked he.
‘Yes,’ answered Lady Arabella promptly, ‘I am sure that I could.’
‘Then let me whisper in your ear,’ said Mischief.
And when he had finished whispering, he and Lady Arabella laughed and nodded at one another and laughed again.
They had a secret, and presently you shall know what it was.
It was late afternoon on Christmas Eve—the busiest moment in the whole year at Santa Claus’s Snow Palace on the very tip-top of the North Pole.
The great sleigh stood in front of the door, the eight tiny reindeer harnessed and in place before it. In and out of the Palace scurried the Brownies, packing the sleigh with the toys they had been at work upon for a long, long year.