going to be a very merry Christmas. It's been so long since I've had a
merry Christmas that I don't believe I'd know how to act if I had
one."

"Let's see," said Santa Claus, "it must be going on fifty years since
I saw you last--yes, you were eight years old the last time I slipped
down the chimney of the old homestead and filled your stocking. Do you
remember it?"

"I remember it well," answered Joel. "I had made up my mind to lie
awake and see Santa Claus; I had heard tell of you, but I'd never seen
you, and Brother Otis and I concluded we'd lie awake and watch for you
to come."

Santa Claus shook his head reproachfully.

"That was very wrong," said he, "for I'm so scarey that if I'd known
you boys were awake I'd never have come down the chimney at all, and
then you'd have had no presents."

"But Otis couldn't keep awake," explained Joel. "We talked about
everythin' we could think of, till father called out to us that if we
didn't stop talking he'd have to send one of us up into the attic to
sleep with the hired man. So in less than five minutes Otis was sound
asleep and no pinching could wake him up. But _I_ was bound to see
Santa Claus and I don't believe anything would've put me to sleep. I
heard the big clock in the sitting-room strike eleven, and I had begun
wonderin' if you never were going to come, when all of a sudden I
heard the tinkle of the bells around your reindeers' necks. Then I
heard the reindeers prancin' on the roof and the sound of your