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The new harness fitted them nicely and soon they were all fastened to the
sledge by twos, with Glossie and Flossie in the lead. These wore the strings of
sleigh-bells, 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
We'll scatter them wide
sparkling snow!"
In our load of toys, As many a child will know;
On our wild night ride O'er the crisp and
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
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