"God!" roared the Biggest Boy, like an angry lion, leaping through the library door-way.
With a slam, up sped the window; with an oath, out whirled Santa Claus!
"You've scared Santa Claus! You've scared Santa Claus!" wailed the Littlest Boy in despair.
"I have, have 1I!" ezdaimed the Biggest Boy, gathering the wailer into his arms.
"And he took my ring," farther lamented the Littlest Boy.
"He did, did he!" repeated the lion—that is, the Biggest Boy—in a commiserating growl. "Never mind; we'll get another."
"But I told him he might, if there's some other little boy who'd ought to have it more," explained the Littlest Boy truthfully. "Maybe he'll bring me one next Christmas."
Here the Biggest Boy shut the treacherous window; and with the Biggest Girl, who by this time had arrived and was hugging and kissing the Littlest Boy's two rosy feet, as they hung down inside the Biggest Boy's arms, close accompanying, carried him upstairs to bed.
What do you think! Evidently Santa Claus repented, or else he had only been joking, or else he could find no other little boy who was more worthy; for, after all, at daylight there was discovered, lying on the mat before the side-door, that very same ring,—wrapped, it is true, not in fine white tissue, but in coarse brown paper.
However, upon the paper was scrawled, in ragged but unmistakable lines:
"for the kid
Santy claws"
LEAVES
BY AGNES LEE
LITTLE dead leaves, little dead leaves.
Thronging about my door;
When the summer wanes and the autumn cleaves,
I have seen ye oft before!
We are little dead hands, little dead hands.
Tapping thy walls around;
Living, we hid the sky's blue lands.
But now we hide the ground.
Little dead hands, beckoning me
Forth from a fire's red glow.
If ye will tell me whither beck ye,
I will open my door and go.
