Little Sonya, who wanted everybody to be happy, reported some of these things to Nicholas, and came away from his cottage with a contented mind, for she knew that the wise smile on his face meant that he had a plan in his kind old head.

      On Christmas eve, the reindeer were surprised to find that when their usual sound was over, Nicholas drove them right past his cottage and out towards the forest, stopping on the edge of the pine grove. A dark figure with a wide grin stepped forward. This was Grinka, the leader of the band of gipsies.

      "Here you are Grinka," said Nicholas, giving him a bundle of small white candles. "You go ahead with these and I’ll follow."

      Grinka stopped at every small fir tree in the grove and tied candles to their branches. Nicholas followed behind, covering the branches of each tree with nuts, shiny red apples and of course a sample of every one of his toys. It was almost dawn when the pair had finished, but there was a tree for each family with children.

      "Now for the lights," said Nicholas and they went from tree to tree, touching a taper to each candle, until the whole dark grove was twinkling and glowing like the centre of a warm hearth fire.

      "I think that’s the prettiest part of it all," said Nicholas, "and you must be sure to wake the children before the sun gets through the pine trees and spoils the effect."

      "Alright," said Grinka, "I’ll go and wake them now, before you go."

page 34

9a

Chapter Five

The First Christmas Stocking

      Nicholas did not leave the wood carver on that Christmas day, or the next, or the next, but stayed on learning to be as good a wood carver as his old master. Marsden realised this and as he was now becoming too old to spend a full day carving, decided to retire and live with his sister in a nearby village. He was very proud of Nicholas and knew that he would be quite able to carry on by himself, and so it was that Nicholas became known as "Nicholas the Woodcarver."

      The village had grown so large that Nicholas did not know every child in the village the way he used to, and the only way that he could tell if a house had children was by a bag hanging on the door on Christmas Eve. With this increase in children his small sled could no longer carry the enormous number of toys and Nicholas had to use Old Marsden’s horse and sleigh for his now large rounds. It had become the custom of the children to leave a brightly decorated bag filled with oats on their doors and when the horse had eaten the oats, Nicholas would fill the bag with the toys he had made.

      Nicholas’ life was not all work. One day he looked up from his workbench and saw some children having a snowball fight in the fresh snow. They were having so much fun that he couldn’t resist the temptation to join in. One of the children, whom Nicholas had never seen before, was standing watching

page 15