The dying fire gave a crackle and a flame leapt up and illumined the deserted living-room. With a preliminary whirr the clock on the mantelpiece struck twelve in its usual excitable way, and as the last stroke died, a whisper ran round the room. The Things shook, themselves from their daytime sleep, and prepared for gossip.

 The armchair by the fire creaked as he stretched his wooden legs and then stopped in surprise as a slow, fat chuckle rose up from the depth of his seat. 

"Who's there?" he asked. 

"She's forgotten me to-night," replied the voice, which came from a bulging mending-basket. "It is a long time since I had the chance to talk to anyone outside the cupboard, but to-night, well, they don't seem to know what they are doing to-night." 

"That's a fact," answered the armchair," Why, Shé hardly sat still a minute." 

"You were luckier than I, grumbled the chair on the other side. "They both sat on me." 

The basket gave a fat chuckle. "I know all about it," She said, "I always know -- but I don't tell all I know?" 

"I suppose," suggested the first armchair, tactfully, “that you have seen a lot in your time. You were here when I came, I believe. Perhaps you could tell us --" 

"I could tell you a lot," She chuckled, "for I know all Her secrets. The letters I've read that She popped inside me! The things I've overheard, sitting on her lap" 

She was twenty when I first came to her, as a birthday present. How delighted She was with me: She fitted me up with needles and cottons, and such pretty things used to find their way in, ribbons and laces, and dainty clothes. As She held me on her lap, She would often smile to herself,and once or twice I heard her whisper a name. One day a dance programme dropped in, and there was that name again, scrawled right across. 

Then, suddenly, I was filled with silks and ribbons, and I knew something was in the air, as I gradually grew emptier, and the pilé of pretty things beside me in the basket grew higher. A horrible experience followed. I was stuffed into a trunk and left for days in the darkness, thrown about from place to place. I thought my end had come." 

The basket paused, and the chairs creaked in sympathy. 

At last I was released, and with excited hands She fitted me up again. Alas, I had the humiliation of being filled to the brim with the most disreputable set of woollen socks I have ever seen. But She! To see the care that She lavished on them, you would have thought She was making a ball-dress! And when he suddenly came and tossed me off her lap, and swung her into his arms, I knew what had happened.” She dropped her voice to a mysterious whisper."He and She had become Them." 

"We see, " said the chairs, but they didn't, for they only had wooden heads. "Is that the end?" asked one of them. 

"That was only the beginning. One day, something else slipped in -- pale blue wool. ‘That's not for His socks!' said I. I knew. And His socks began to pile up again, and Her pretties lay waiting to be mended, while blue wool twisted itself among the heather mixture, as She knitted the daintiest of bootees. 

One night She left me lying on the floor. Next time I saw Her, the little blue boots had a wearer -- Son had come. 

Ah me, how the time flies! It seemed only a few weeks before the little blue boots were replaced by white socks, and then brown ones full of holes, and little knickers badly torn, and I heard Her sigh as She darned and darned, and still the pile grew. But to-night," (here the chairs tightened closer -- this was what they were waiting to hear) "to-night, She tossed them all aside again, brown and heather  mixture in one great heap. To-night there was a new light in her eyes and a new smile on Her lips, and I knew why, for I saw what She Was doing -- She was threading new ribbons in the little blue boots."