"Good!" cried Santa Claus again, and then his face seemed to shine like the sun, and there seemed to be wreaths of holly and bunches of mistletoe sticking all over him, and he sprang into his sleigh, the reindeer shook their horns, making the bells jingle like anything, and then, off on top of the snowflakes rode Santa Claus, calling back:
"All right, piggie boys, I won't forget you, or any of the earth children. It will soon be Christmas, and if you don't get autos or steam engines you'll get something else," and then he vanished from sight, and Flop Ear and Curly Tail went home, wondering very much at what had happened.
And in the next story, in case the telephone man doesn't crawl through the water pipe and scare the window shutter so that it goes bang-bang all day, I'll tell you about Flop Ear and the stockings.
STORY XXX
FLOPPY AND THE STOCKINGS
"Flop Ear," said Mrs. Twistytail, the pig lady, to her son one afternoon, "I think you will have to go to the store for me now."
"All right, I'm ready to go," said Flop Ear, "only I thought Curly Tail just went, and that I could stay home and read my picture book."
"He did go," said the pig lady, "but after I sent him for the cocoanut to make the Christmas cake, I happened to remember that I needed some chocolate to make a chocolate cake, so I think you will have to go for that. I could send Baby Pinky, only she is over at Jennie Chipmunk's, playing with her dolls."
"Oh, I'll go!" said Flop Ear, and he laid aside his book, and got ready to go to the store. It was getting nearer and nearer to Christmas every day, and, though the piggie boys hadn't seen Santa Claus himself since that one time in the woods, they had seen a lot of people dressed up like him.
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.