The children scarcely knew what to do first. Some ran to the Toy Shop, others to the Candy Man to taste his fine new wares. How glad they were to see their old friends, the Toy Lady and the Candy Man, once more! Some of the children settled down to dig, some of them fell to building in the sand, while many of them pulled off their shoes and stockings and happily splashed and paddled about in the cool green waves. Every one took a holiday, fathers and mothers too. And that night, when dusk fell, they were still romping and playing and enjoying themselves on the beach. Suddenly, out blazed the light from the Lighthouse and the figures of the King and the Queen stood on the shore. ‘We like it here!’ shouted the King, making a great deal of noise for such a quiet man. ‘We mean to stay! It is quiet here! We never want to live in the Town again!’ The King and the Queen waved their hands good-bye. They had reached the Lighthouse door when the King turned back. ‘Our crowns!’ he shouted. ‘You may have them! We don’t want them any more!’ And he tossed them one by one into the sea. When the crowns came floating in on the beach, the people picked them up and gave them to the Toy Lady and the Candy Man. ‘Please be our King and Queen,’ said they. But the Toy Lady and the Candy Man shook their heads. ‘I would rather sell toys than be a Queen,’ said the Toy Lady. ‘I would rather make candy than be a King,’ said the Candy Man. So, since they had no King nor Queen, the people locked the front door of the Palace and threw the key away. The crowns they fastened over the Toy Shop and the Candy Shop because they looked well hanging there. Bo-Peep Town became overnight what it had always been before, a gay and lively and pleasant place in which to live. And Silvertongue and Kindheart and Sweet-Tooth went home happy, but not any more happy than Santa Claus when he heard what they had done. BUTTONS AND BOOTS BUTTONS AND BOOTS It was the middle of the night. All the Brownies, and Santa Claus, too, were fast asleep in their beds in the Snow Palace at the very tip-top of the North Pole. It was a cold, frosty night. ‘Whoo-oo-oo! Whoo-oo-oo!’ sang the West Wind round the chimneys, in such a chilly voice, with a tinkle of ice in it, that the Brownies snuggled down under their covers and pulled the bed-quilts up about their ears. All the Brownies were fast asleep, I said. But, as the great clock in the hall downstairs slowly boomed out the hour of twelve, Brownie Fleetfoot opened his bright black eyes. ‘Ugh! How cold it is!’ shivered Brownie Fleetfoot, trying to roll himself into a ball. ‘It wasn’t so cold when I went to bed. I wonder what the Moon is laughing at up there in the sky. He likes to see me freeze, I guess.’ For a great silver Moon, with a broad smile on his face, was looking straight in the window at Fleetfoot, and it did seem as if he were laughing at some joke of his own.