Before Santa Claus could answer or even lay down his pen, there was a noise from the window that made Santa Claus and the Brownies jump to their feet. Over the window-sill rose the head of a little boy. His eyes were round as buttons with fright, his mouth was open to call, ‘No! No! No!’ and every single hair stood straight on end with excitement, which, as you may imagine, gave him a very strange look indeed. The next moment the little boy, who was dressed in his night-clothes, came scrambling through the half-open window into the room. Straight to Santa Claus he ran and clasped him round his great high boots. ‘No! No! No!’ called out the little boy again, squeezing Santa Claus’s boots close in his arms. ‘Don’t cross out my name! I will be good! I will put away my toys every night! Don’t leave a coal in my stocking at Christmas! Don’t give me an apple with a bite! Oh! Oh! Oh!’ Here the little boy could say no more, for he hadn’t a speck of breath left. ‘Well, well, well,’ said Santa Claus, sitting down and lifting the little boy to his knee, ‘it is the Little Brown Boy himself, I do declare.’ ‘Yes,’ nodded the Little Brown Boy with a sniff, ‘and I am going to put away my toys every night after this. I promise you, Santa Claus. I promise I will.’ ‘Good!’ answered Santa Claus heartily. ‘Good! Your name is still in the Book. It isn’t crossed off yet. See for yourself.’ And there, in Santa Claus’s own Book of Good Children, the Little Brown Boy, leaning from Santa Claus’s knee, saw his name written as plain as plain could be. ‘Why don’t you take him up to see the toys?’ suggested Santa Claus to his Brownies, who were now smiling and nodding at one another and hopping about. So upstairs they went to a great room filled to every corner with toys very much like those the Little Brown Boy had at home. At their first glimpse of the Little Brown Boy, the toys became excited, so excited that the Little Brown Boy held fast to the Brownies’ hands. For the toys began to call out and all talk at once and tell the Little Brown Boy just how toys felt when they were left lying on the floor at night. ‘We want to rest in our own stable and not lie out in the cold,’ whinnied the horses, stamping their feet and tossing their heads as they spoke. ‘We like to be packed neatly in our box,’ said the tin soldiers, giving the Little Brown Boy a fine salute. ‘It is so untidy and unlike a soldier to lie about on the floor.’ ‘We can’t drive straight and with speed to a fire,’ spoke out the firemen, growing red in the face, ‘unless our fire-engines are placed in a row on the shelf. You must understand how that is yourself.’ The Little Brown Boy nodded. He did begin to understand. ‘My legs grow stiff when I lie on the floor,’ complained the Jumping Jack, with an injured look. ‘I can’t jump so well. Could you?’ ‘No,’ murmured the Little Brown Boy, hanging his head and almost putting his finger in his mouth, but not quite.