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Show EYERIE G 1' liJhtl! Mary Graham Dormer jxpYfvctfT ffr wfjTfxn ,yi'UfAPM. avcr HELPING SANTA CLAU3 The children were popping corn over the red coals of the fire. The corn ...... - uliu ueeii uneo. oi course, long before. be-fore. "We're ready," some of the popcorn pop-corn would splutter, splut-ter, while some of the other pieces not yet white would say : "Wait a moment, mo-ment, we're almost ready. Wait for us." And the children would shake the popper so that the corn would not get The Children Were burnt and so that Popping Corn. every bit would get "done" in Just the right way and thoroughly opened. "Tills will help Santa Claus," said Dick. "Yes, It will help him, and It's such fun to feel we are helping him," said Daisy. "He knows how we love pop corn on our Christmas tree," said Dot, "because "be-cause he wrote us a little note the Christmas before last and said that he thought we were very wise to like pop corn on the tree and to know that it made one of the prettiest of decorations. "He said he thought it was beautiful beauti-ful and that he was so pleased that we had It all strung for him. "He said it would be pretty hard to string so much pop corn on Christmas eve, and that he was delighted the way we helped him. "Of course he also told us that he liked to put It on the tree, and that he knew we wanted him to trim the tree. "He told us he would never be too busy to be able to do that. "Do you remember that letter?" asked Dot. "It was a wonderful letter." let-ter." "Indeed we do remember it," said Daisy, "and he said he thought the cranberries looked so pretty, too, on the black thread." "We have almost enough pop corn now," said Dick, who had been popping pop-ping the last of the pop corn and whose fiice was quite red from sitting so long in front of the fire. "I believe we have," said Daisy. They had to waif until the pop corn had cooled off before they began to string it, so they set to work over the cranberries. "Here's the black thread," said Daisy, "and remember we put on a cranberry, tie a little knot around it Just once will do, then we leave a space to put on another cranberry, and so on until we have many long strings all ready to leave on this old chair." "Yes," said Dot, "that was the way we always did it. Sometimes at first It is hard to remember re-member what we did at Christmas time a year ago. So they strung t h e cranberries, with each cranberry cran-berry a fingers length from the next. That would help the tree to look so much like Christinas. And the popcorn would make it look as though little flakes of snow bad fallen T V'-'W tJ i it h on it, for the pop Thnt Waa the corn was strung v.ay yje Always with white thread. Did t. of -course. All the stringing was done thirt afternoon and evening, a few days before be-fore Christmas, and left waiting for Santa Clous. Santa Claus was simply delighted at the help the children gave him. It pleased him enormously. |