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Title: The Good Crow's Happy Shop

Author: Patten Beard

Illustrator: Arthur Hull

Release Date: August 5, 2015 [EBook #49617]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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THE GOOD CROW’S HAPPY SHOP

The Good Crow and his Mail Box

BY
PATTEN BEARD
Author of “The Jolly Year,” “Marjorie’s Literary
Dolls,” “The Jolly Book of Boxcraft,”
“The Bluebird’s Garden,” etc.




THIRTEEN PICTURES OF HAPPY THINGS
THAT WERE MADE BY THE CHILDREN IN
THE SHOP OF THE GOOD CROW CAW CAW,
DRAWN AND ARRANGED BY THE AUTHOR
WITH MARGINAL BY MR. ARTHUR HULL

Copyright 1917
By PATTEN BEARD


THE PILGRIM PRESS
BOSTON

THIS BOOK OF THE HAPPY SHOP
IS DEDICATED TO
HENRY JARRETT AND CAW CAW,
HIS GOOD PLAY
CROW

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[1]

THE GOOD CROW’S HAPPY SHOP

CHAPTER I
The Good Crow and Aunt Phoebe

ONCE a year, Aunt Phoebe came to visit in the city at Jimsi’s house. Aunt Phoebe was Mother’s best friend. Jimsi and Henry and baby Katherine had known her ever so long. They could not remember the time when they did not know Aunt Phoebe. Probably the time dated back to the age of rattles and squeaky rubber dolls when the children were so small that they knew nothing at all about Aunt Phoebe’s Good Crow, Caw Caw.

You see, Aunt Phoebe was a “play aunt.” She did not really belong to the family as everyday aunts and uncles do. She began by playing she was an aunt and almost everything that she did was either make-believe or play or something equally jolly. And Aunt[2] Phoebe’s Good Crow Caw Caw was a play too. It was a happy make-believe that had grown up with Jimsi and Henry and Katherine.

Just how the play about the Good Crow started, nobody was ever able to tell. Even Aunt Phoebe herself could not say. But the make-believe was that Aunt Phoebe knew of a wonderfully delightful bird who was big and black and who liked nothing better than to do nice things for boys and girls.

Jimsi and Henry and Katherine knew well that all this was a lovely pretend. One might believe in it as one believed in fairies or fairy tales that one knows are not at all true—and yet fun to imagine. The Good Crow was a lovely pretend.

Everybody who knew Jimsi and Henry and Katherine, knew about Caw Caw. He appeared most frequently when the great visit of the year fell due and when the expressman had brought in Aunt Phoebe’s trunk and taken the strap off. Then Aunt Phoebe would say, “Oh, Jimsi, Caw Caw sent you a present. He sent one to Henry and Katherine too. I must get it out of my trunk! Come! Let’s see what it is[3]!”

Then Jimsi and Henry and Katherine would laugh and begin to play the play of Caw Caw Crow that would last as long as Aunt Phoebe stayed at their home—no, longer sometimes for the Good Crow often wrote little letters to the children, just for fun.

The presents that came from Caw Caw in Aunt Phoebe’s trunk were not very big presents; they were boxes of crayons or paints or things like scissors and tools to make things. Sometimes there would be a game or a ball or a very nice toy or transfer pictures. The things that Caw Caw Crow sent the children were mostly things to do. One can always find a use for scissors or paints or crayons and things to do, you know.

Maybe, when the children were little, he had begun with giving them boxes of blocks. Now that Jimsi was eleven and Henry nine and Katherine four, Aunt Phoebe’s crow sent them interesting things—not blocks or rubber dolls. He gave them each a plasticine outfit once. Another time he sent them all painting-books. He gave them something to do with their brains and their fingers. That is the best kind of play, don’t you think so?

Well, all the time Aunt Phoebe was at the[4] house in the city, her crow did jolly things for the children. He never really appeared. Jimsi and Henry and Katherine never saw him. He was a lovely pretend like Santa Claus. Aunt Phoebe, who knew more than anybody else did about Caw Caw, declared that he spent most of his time in the Santa Claus Land and that he flew only now and then to the home of Jimsi and Henry and Katherine when Aunt Phoebe was visiting there. He sometimes came at night when the children were sound asleep—exactly as Santa Claus comes. He flew in at the window and very, very often he left wee little letters under the children’s pillows. Maybe he left only a lollipop or a stick of peppermint candy. One never knew when one went to bed promptly and cheerfully what would be under one’s pillow! That was the fun of the play! There was mystery about it. It made fairyland a real everyday-come-true fun!

Some days, if Jimsi or Henry or Katherine had been naughty, there would be a little crow letter that would say:

After this kind of letter one felt more than ever ashamed.

Maybe the Good Crow would put a different sort of letter under the pillow:

One might come home from school and find that Aunt Phoebe’s crow had flown in at Aunt Phoebe’s window during school hours to leave tickets to go to a special children’s performance of Alice in Wonderland to be on Saturday afternoon. Oh, the crow was always doing things that were happy. And, you know, Aunt Phoebe kept him fully informed as to what the children liked best. She knew.

Mother and Daddy and Aunt Phoebe all liked the crow. Indeed, strange to relate, sometimes when Aunt Phoebe was visiting[6] and Mother happened to say that she had admired a certain kind of pretty plant that she had seen in a window down-town, the crow brought the plant and set it in the middle of the dining-room table next day! He left a card with it, of course. The card said, “With love from the children’s Crow.” (Of course, a real crow couldn’t have carried the things that Caw Caw did. Being a play crow and just pretend, he could bring almost anything.)

Oh, I tell you it was jolly! Everybody in the house crowed with laughter over Aunt Phoebe’s Caw Caw. He made jokes; he sent funny pictures cut from magazines; he wrote rhymes and verses that made Mother and Daddy and Jimsi and Henry and Katherine—and even Aunt Phoebe herself—just double up and laugh. One day he left each of the children a big black feather. The feathers were done up in reams and reams of tissue paper. You’d have thought there were BIG presents in the parcels that were waiting on the hall table till Jimsi and Henry came home from school! And then after unrolling and unrolling and unrolling and unrolling out dropped the black feathers. They looked as if somebody had found them in the feather[7] duster but they were labeled, “From Caw Caw’s wing, with love. Keep to remember me.”

Oh, Aunt Phoebe’s visits were such good fun and Caw Caw Crow was so jolly! It was always hard to say good-bye after the two weeks or the month had passed. Henry kept all his crow-treasures—except the eatable ones and those like Alice in Wonderland entertainment tickets. He put them in a drawer with his letters. Jimsi kept hers in a box. As for Katherine, she was still interested in blocks and squeaky dolls made of rubber. Mother kept Katherine’s crow letters till Katherine should grow up to enjoy them all over again some day.

Well, when Aunt Phoebe had gone, the Good Crow play usually stopped unless Mother kept it up or Jimsi or Henry or maybe Daddy tried it. But the crow was never as entertaining as when Aunt Phoebe was around.

Once upon a time, Jimsi got sick. She was really frightfully sick—sick for a long, long time. She had the doctor and then she began to get well slowly. At this time, almost every day in the mail would come a letter from Aunt[8] Phoebe’s Crow telling Jimsi something nice to play in bed. Some days a postal card would come. Some days a pretty book. Some days a bit of doll-sewing. But the very nicest thing of all came when Jimsi was well enough to go out-doors again and not well enough to go back to school. It was a crow letter and it came with a postmark of the town where Aunt Phoebe lived on it. This is what the letter said. (It was written on very wee blue notepaper and written in the tiny handwriting that Aunt Phoebe’s Good Crow usually liked.)

Oh, oh, oh! Hooray!

“Mumsey, I may go, mayn’t I?” pleaded Jimsi. “Oh, I never was at Aunt Phoebe’s! I’ll be good; I’ll go to bed early and I’ll try[9] not to read too much; I’ll take my horrid medicine and I’ll never, never forget to wear overshoes!”

“I want to go too,” urged Henry. “I want to go too!”

“Me too!” echoed baby Katherine. “Me too!”

“Hush!” cried Mother. “I’ll have to ask Daddy, Jimsi dear. We’ll see what the doctor thinks of it. Maybe Aunt Phoebe’s house is the best place a little girl could grow well and strong in. Maybe you can go—but I can’t promise; we’ll see.”

All day long Jimsi went about the house wondering whether she was going to be allowed to go to Aunt Phoebe’s. She and Henry talked about it. “What do you suppose the crow’s Happy Shop is?” they asked each other.

“It’s something ever so nice if it’s the crow,” declared Jimsi. “Maybe it’s a store where the crow buys things.”

“It might be the place where he makes things,” Henry suggested. “Shops are sometimes places where things are made.”

All day long they talked about it. After the doctor had come and gone and when[10] Daddy reached home after business, when the tea table things were cleared away and Jimsi and Henry and Mother and Daddy sat about the lamp in the living-room, they talked about the good crow and the Happy Shop some more. It was decided that day after to-morrow, Jimsi should really go to visit Aunt Phoebe and find out what a Happy Shop was!

Oh, oh, oh! Hooray! Three cheers for Aunt Phoebe and the Good Crow! Hip-hip-hoorah! Hip-hip-hoorah! Hip-hip-hoorah!

That night Jimsi was very happy. She fell asleep to dream of a big black crow who was sitting in a queer little store inside an odd house that was like the White Rabbit’s home in Alice in Wonderland. Of course Jimsi had never seen the crow face to face before but the dream seemed delightfully real and funny. She told Daddy and Mother about it in the morning, and Henry declared that dreams were never true and that, of course, Jimsi wouldn’t see the crow at Aunt Phoebe’s because the crow was all make-believe and there wasn’t any. “We just pretend there is a crow,” he said. “It’s a kind of game. The Happy Shop is prob-ab-ly—(the word is[11] quite a long one for nine years old)—prob-ab-ly another nice new play of Aunt Phoebe’s. There won’t be any real crow there, Jimsi!”

“Oh, I know,” smiled Jimsi. “But it will be a splendid fun of some kind. I can’t wait to find out what it is. When I find out, I’ll write home all about it.”

Really everybody was as interested to know what The Happy Shop really was as Jimsi. Poor Henry had to go off to school. Daddy went to his office downtown. Only Mother and Jimsi were left to speculate upon the subject that day. It was a busy day too for Jimsi had to get ready to go to Aunt Phoebe’s for weeks and weeks while she grew strong in the country. There had to be warm things in her trunk. Some of them had to be mended. It took time. But at last the trunk was packed. (Mother and Henry and Katherine wrote crow letters for Aunt Phoebe and tucked these away inside. Jimsi volunteered to see that they reached Aunt Phoebe’s pillow—somehow.)

And then the day came! Daddy took Jimsi’s bag. There was a big hugging for Mother and Katherine and Henry who couldn’t go to the train because he had to go to school—and then[12] Jimsi and Daddy walked down the street to take the car for the railway station. At the corner Jimsi turned for the forty-eleventh time: “Maybe you can come up for vacation, Henry,” she called back. “I’ll write you all about The Happy Shop.” Just at that moment the car came and they hopped aboard. Before she knew what was happening, Daddy and she were on the train and the train was leaving the city. Slowly the train came out of the dark tunnel that marked its departure from town. Out into open spaces of wide skies and fields it curved along the tracks. And as Jimsi gazed through the car window happily, watching the landscape bright in the sunlight, there flew from a thicket a single big black crow! “Caw-caw,” called the crow. “Caw-caw.” And Jimsi pulled Daddy’s arm—his head was deep in a newspaper—“Oh, look, look!” she cried. “Daddy, there’s the Good Crow!” Wasn’t it fun! Oh, wasn’t it fun! That big black crow had said caw-caw and he was flying in the same direction as Jimsi’s train! Already Aunt Phoebe’s play crow seemed more real than ever. And every moment the train was bringing Jimsi nearer and nearer to Aunt Phoebe and The Happy Shop.

[13]

CHAPTER II
The Happy Shop and the Magic Book

THE first thing Jimsi said, when the train stopped at a little station where Aunt Phoebe was waiting to greet them on the platform, was, “Oh, Aunt Phoebe, I saw the Crow. He followed the train. I’m sure it must have been your crow because I heard him say caw-caw!”

Aunt Phoebe smiled. “Wasn’t that funny,” she laughed. “Wait, Jimsi, you’ll really see my crow soon. He’s in The Happy Shop now. But don’t expect too much, dear. You mustn’t be disappointed!”

They walked through the little country town together. Aunt Phoebe’s house, so she said, wasn’t far from the station. Everything seemed so quiet and there were so few people! Jimsi had only been in the country summers. Now that it was winter-time and the ground was bare and brown, the country didn’t seem like the same sort of a place. Jimsi began to[14] wonder what she would find to do all day long. True, Aunt Phoebe could always invent splendid things—and there was going to be a fine new play called The Happy Shop! Yes, there was The Happy Shop! “What is The Happy Shop?” she asked, looking up to Aunt Phoebe as she trotted along between Daddy and her. “I want to know all about The Happy Shop!”

“Oh, you’ll have to wait for that, Jimsi,” returned Aunt Phoebe. “Here we are”—and they turned in at a quaint green gate that led to a small bare garden that was shrouded in boughs of evergreen. The house was small like the garden. Aunt Phoebe lived here alone, though one never, never could imagine an aunt like Aunt Phoebe as being the least bit lonely. Why, she never could be lonely—there was too much for her to think about and do, don’t you know. It’s only the persons who sit still and think how miserable they are who are lonely!

Jimsi followed her into the hall. It was old-fashioned and quaint like the garden. Upstairs there was a wee little room that looked out into the boughs of the evergreens. It was papered in soft blue-green and it had a most inviting soft bed with a blue cover. Aunt[15] Phoebe took Jimsi’s cloak and hat and hung them in the closet. She put back the covers of the bed and made her lie down and rest. “You came here to grow well and strong,” she said. “We must do what Mother wants you to do. By and by I’ll call you and you can come down.” She covered Jimsi up with something downy. Then she kissed her. “Deary,” she smiled. “Look under the pillow—” and then she closed the door softly and left Jimsi lying there feeling under the pillow for—for—why a crow letter, of course!

Jimsi giggled softly to herself as she felt it under the pillow and drew it out.

It was such a darling little tiny letter! It had a wee stamp in one corner. The stamp was drawn with red ink. Oh, it was darling of thoughtful Aunt Phoebe to do that! Wasn’t it exactly like her too! Jimsi smiled as she folded the tiny sheet and put it back[16] in the envelope. Then, obediently, she curled down into the downy bed and shut her eyes tight, resolving to do all she could to help Aunt Phoebe keep the promise to Mother.

When she woke, it was growing dusk. Aunt Phoebe was at the door of the little blue room calling, “Up, Jimsi! What a fine nap you’ve had. It’s almost tea-time!” She lit a candle and helped Jimsi unpack her trunk a bit and dress. Then, hand in hand they went down to the hall where Daddy was consulting his watch. “I must be off,” he declared.

Well, for a few moments after he had gone, Jimsi thought she was going to cry—but she didn’t! Oh, no! Of course she didn’t! She knew that she was going to miss Daddy fearfully and Mother and Henry and Katherine too but Jimsi was a plucky girl. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Can’t I help you get tea on the table, Aunt Phoebe?” she asked. (Mother told Jimsi once that the way to be happy was to forget oneself. “Think! See if you can’t help somebody, dear, when you feel like that. Try it and see!”)

So Jimsi tried to help. She set the table with the pretty blue plates. She found where knives and forks were in the sideboard. She[17] searched out the tumblers and by and by all was done.

“Shall we ask the crow in to tea?” demanded Aunt Phoebe, coming in from the kitchen with a dish steaming and good to sniff.

“Can we!” exclaimed Jimsi.

Aunt Phoebe smiled. “We might play it,” she suggested. “Lay another plate, just for fun. I’ll get the crow!”

Jimsi was mystified. Oh, dear! How jolly! How splendidly jolly! What was Aunt Phoebe up to now?

And then while she was still wondering and laughing softly, into the room stepped Aunt Phoebe and she had—she had a big black crow in her hand! He was a stuffed crow and very black and splendid. He was perched on a twig that was on a standard. Quite solemnly but with her eyes merry with a twinkle, Aunt Phoebe set the crow down in the chair that was to be his and introduced him.

“This is Jimsi, my play-niece,” said she, “Jimsi, this is my play-crow, Caw Caw.”

“I’m very happy to know you, Caw Caw,” said Jimsi, entering with spirit into the play. “You’ve always been a friend of mine but I never expected to see you really and truly. I[18] thought you were just pretend, you know—something like Cinderella’s lovely fairy godmother. And yet I always liked to play you were true. I’m glad now that I can play you’re true!”

The crow said nothing, of course. But Aunt Phoebe explained that he didn’t talk much, so the two of them ate supper and talked together, making conversation for the crow the way one plays dolls.

“Will you tell me about The Happy Shop, Mr. Crow?” inquired Jimsi politely of the funny stuffed crow. She could hardly keep her face straight but she hid a smile in her table napkin.

“I’ll have to talk for him,” Aunt Phoebe declared. “Yes, I’ll tell you about The Happy Shop. We’ll go there first thing in the morning. I think you’ll like it. There are ever so many nice things in it but the very nicest is the Magic Book, I think.”

“The Magic Book?” echoed Jimsi. “What’s the Magic Book?”

“I’ll show it to you after the Crow goes to roost,” answered Aunt Phoebe. “You mustn’t call him Mr. Crow! He doesn’t like it. His name is Caw Caw[19].”

Perhaps the Crow would have liked corn to eat. I’m afraid Aunt Phoebe’s crow, being just a stuffed play-crow, wouldn’t have eaten corn, though, if he had had it—no, not any more than a doll will eat cake at a party. You have to pretend that the doll eats. So Aunt Phoebe pretended most beautifully to pour out cocoa for the crow—a second cup, mind you! She gave him second helpings of nearly everything and Jimsi followed suit. Indeed, her appetite seemed really pretty good for a little girl who is getting well after a long sickness.

When tea was over, Aunt Phoebe said that they would go to see The Happy Shop, even though it was dark there now. She lit a dainty pink candle and with the Good Crow Caw Caw, they went into the hall.

Just off the hall at the side of the house was Aunt Phoebe’s study. She did ever so many wonderful things there. She wrote books. Maybe that was how Aunt Phoebe came to think up so many jolly things to play. She was almost always making up a story or writing an article for a magazine or something. She knew all manner of things and when she didn’t know about them, there were books in[20] the study that could tell—great big books all full of print, books that Aunt Phoebe did not write but books like those in the school library at home. Aunt Phoebe explained all about the books and showed Jimsi her desk and the big typewriter as they passed through into The Happy Shop that opened with glass doors into the study. It was—Oh, it was a little glass room. In the light of the candle, Jimsi could see blooming plants on shelves. There was also a couch and a big table and a chair. On the table, lay a big flat book—ever so big. It was a queer book. In the dark, Jimsi couldn’t see exactly what it was. Aunt Phoebe picked it up and said, “This is the Magic Book, Jimsi! You can’t see what it is like here but we’ll look it over in my study where there is a lamp. Now, we’ll leave Caw Caw here. It’s where he stays at night. In the morning when the plants are watered, I think he must fly off to the Santa Claus land but you’ll find his mail-box here and you can always look for letters in it.” She picked up a small white box that was very like a tiny mail-box. On it was written MAIL. (It looked as if Aunt Phoebe’s own fingers—that were very clever[21] fingers indeed—might have made the toy mail-box for the Good Crow.)

Oh, it was lovely—lovely! Jimsi squealed delightedly. The Happy Shop was splendid—of course, she didn’t understand all that it meant yet, but she knew it was going to be splendid, splendid!

Jimsi put the little mail-box back on the shelf beside the crow. She peered about in the candle-light to see more of The Happy Shop, but it was really too dark to see what else was there and she knew she would have to wait till morning. She followed Aunt Phoebe into the study to look at the Magic Book.

“I suppose,” said Aunt Phoebe, sitting down to her big study table and drawing Jimsi up on her lap quite as if she enjoyed having little girls muss up her pretty blue dress, “maybe you won’t think that this book is magic but I assure you that it IS! In it are ever so many, many, many different kinds of splendid things,—things to make, Jimsi.”

Jimsi looked at the big book spread out on the study table. On its cover was written the name of a wall paper firm. As she turned the leaves, there were papers of all kinds in it, blue and pink and yellow and green and red and[22] brown and violet and white and even purple. There were sheets of striped papers as well as plain papers. There were dotted papers, crossed papers, papers with big designs and papers with small designs. Some had flowers and some had none. Some were thin and some were heavy. Some had splendid dashing sprays of floral coloring. Others were inconspicuous and unassuming. There were all sorts of combinations[23] of color and pattern. Yes, there were even figures in some of the borders and there was paper meant for nursery walls. It had dogs and cats and little ducks in it. There was more of the nursery wall paper, they found. Why, there were fairies in one pattern! Jimsi was delighted! “They are beautiful! Look at this!” she kept exclaiming.

The Magic Book of the Good Crow’s Happy Shop Was a Big Sample Book of Wall Paper

“All hidden in this book, Jimsi, are ever so many things. That’s why I called it the Magic Book. You can’t see half that is here. I don’t begin to know how many things are in these papers. We’ll have to ask Caw Caw to help us. You see, he knows much and he can tell you in his play letters, maybe. We call your sunny little room there The Happy Shop because you are going to learn how to make some of the things that are to be found in the Magic Book every day. In The Happy Shop is a work-table and some paste and a pair of scissors. To-morrow, the Good Crow will leave a letter in the mail-box, I think, and tell you what you can do to make your own fun all by yourself for play. What do you like best to play at home, Jimsi?”

“Dolls,” promptly sang out Jimsi. “I love to play dolls. But it isn’t much fun to[24] play dolls all alone and I left mine at home. I was afraid that my best doll would get hurt in packing and I didn’t want to break her—beside that, I thought you’d probably have The Happy Shop play to keep me busy.”

“Yes, you’re right, Jimsi! And it will keep you busy too!” smiled Aunt Phoebe. “Do you know, it was just luck that made me run across the Magic Book. You see I had the little room where you are repapered in blue. I’m so glad I did! And the paper hanger brought this sample book with him when he came. When I saw it and after I chose the blue paper in your room, I asked if I could buy it. He shook his head. ‘It’s just a sample book,’ he said, ‘We have ever so many of them. The dealers give them to us and we throw them away after we have no more use for them. The patterns are new every year and the fresh sample books come in in January. This happens to be a book of last year and if you want it, you are more than welcome to it, if it is of any use to you.’”

“Why, think of it!” Jimsi beamed, squeezing Aunt Phoebe’s hand. “Did you tell him?”

“Oh, I told him that I’d like to have the book very much and that I thought there were[25] ever so many children who would like his old sample books of wall paper,” returned Aunt Phoebe. “He just gives them away. Paper-hangers, it seems, always throw them out or sell them to the junkmen and they never give them to children because, Jimsi dear, the children don’t know anything at all about them. Nobody but the Good Crow and I know about Magic that is in old sample books of wall paper! But, Jimsi, it’s time for bed and you know we both made Mother a promise. Kiss me good-night, dear. Here’s the candle. I’ll come up for a hug later as Mother does.”

And then Jimsi went up to the little blue room with her candle. She turned down the covers and slipped her hand under the pillow but the crow had not put any other letter there. Not again that day!

[26]
[27]

CHAPTER III
The Paper Dolls Jimsi Made

THE sun woke Jimsi in the morning. It was peeping into the little blue room from between the evergreen trees outside. For a moment, Jimsi wondered where she was and then she remembered, of course! She hopped into her red woolly wrapper and slipped on the slippers that had Peter Rabbit’s picture on their toes. The door was open into Aunt Phoebe’s room and in she ran to say good-morning. “I just can’t wait to see The Happy Shop, Auntie,” she chirped. “Please, might I go and look at it right away now!

“Well—yes,” Aunt Phoebe deliberated, “only come right back after you’ve peeked into the mail-box. I dare say the crow has left something there.”

So off sped Jimsi in the little red shoes that had Peter Rabbit’s picture on them, through the study where pages of white paper on the big desk showed that Aunt Phoebe had worked[28] writing a story late last night. Jimsi opened the glass door that led into The Happy Shop. It opened with a wee brass doorknob and the doors swung open into the study. Beyond there was a kind of enclosed porch—only it was not a porch. It was more like a conservatory or a room with glass sides and top. There were blue curtains that could be drawn to keep out the sunlight and windows that opened wide to let in the fresh air. Plants bloomed all about on shelves. Right beside the shelf where Aunt Phoebe had put the crow last night there was a beautiful green vine that had blue-petaled buds and star-shaped flowers. Could anybody imagine a more lovely place in which to play than this Happy Shop!

Jimsi sighed happily. It was all so perfect! How she wished Mother could see it! Wouldn’t Henry and Katherine like to play there! Then Jimsi remembered that she had promised not to stay long and she reached for the Crow Mail-Box. Surely! there was a tiny envelope in the box! What fun!

Upstairs, seated on the bed in the little blue room with Aunt Phoebe hovering about to watch her read it, Jimsi chuckled over the Good Crow Caw Caw’s letter.

[29]

Jimsi could hardly wait to finish breakfast and then, afterwards, she and Aunt Phoebe took a brisk walk to market and back. All of it delayed the crow play but all the time Jimsi was talking about it. “Oh, I never knew there were such splendid papers to make paper doll clothes anywhere, Aunt Phoebe! I didn’t think of it at all last night when you showed me the Magic Book! It will be the most jolly[30] kind of fun! Think of the dresses that the flowered papers will make!”

“Yes,” smiled Aunt Phoebe, “and jackets and cloaks and hats and muffs and scarfs and kimonos—oh, my! I can’t begin to name all the clothes you can make.”

“Are there little girl dolls in the fashion magazines? There are, aren’t there?”

Aunt Phoebe nodded.

“Then I’ll make little girl dresses for them—O-oo! Party dresses!”

“Maybe there are babies and little boys and men in the colored picture pages of the fashion books too!”

“Oh, I’ll make a whole family! I think it will be simply dandy! Maybe I can copy the styles in the magazine. That would be nice! Oh, Aunt Phoebe, aren’t we about ready to go home?” But though Jimsi wanted to get to The Happy Shop, she waited patiently while Aunt Phoebe did errands. It was about half past ten before Jimsi was able to throw off her coat and rush for The Happy Shop.

“I’m going to be very busy,” Aunt Phoebe warned. “You’ll hear the typewriter click-click-click. The crow has put all kinds of little things in the drawer of the table, I think. You[31] won’t have to disturb me, Jimsi. I’m ever so particular about not being spoken to when I’m busy, Jimsi. But you’ll be busy yourself. When I finish, I want to see all the splendid paper dolls you have made and you must show me every one of their dresses and hats!”

With that, Aunt Phoebe pulled out her desk chair and became suddenly absorbed in her morning’s work. Jimsi, in the sunny Happy Shop, slowly turned to close the glass doors after her. The windows were open a bit and, the softest of fresh breezes fluttered the leaves of the blue vine that crept past the crow’s mail-box. The little girl could not decide what to do first! The Magic Book was so wonderfully interesting; the patterns of paper so wonderfully pretty. Which should she choose for the first paper doll dress? Jimsi decided on one that had pink sprigs of daisies in it. Then, suddenly, she saw another that was covered with yellow flowers. And, beside these, there were numbers and numbers more! Jimsi turned the leaves of the Magic Book on and on. Each new pattern seemed the prettiest one yet. And how many leaves there were in that sample book! Why, the leaves were so very large and long that each[32] would make hundreds of dresses all alike, if one wished.

The Paper Dolls That Were Cut from Magazines and Whose Clothes Were Made from Wall Paper

At last Jimsi decided to leave the Magic Book and make at least one paper doll that could be dressed. She settled herself cosily on the wicker couch with a pile of the fashion books beside her. Of course, she found a pretty lady right away. The lady had dark hair done up in a very modern and stylish way. Jimsi cut her out.[33]

But the paper doll had a dress on! Oh dear! How can you put another dress on a doll that already has a costume on her? Jimsi thought: she decided to take the lady’s outline as a guide and make a new body using the head as it was printed. So she placed the paper doll on the sheet of cardboard and traced around her to get the outline. Then she pasted the head on the cardboard and drew stockings and slippers. She colored the arms on the cardboard flesh-tint and the stockings and slippers black. Then she cut out the cardboard outline that had the paper head and there, if you please, was a real paper doll, as splendid as any you ever saw anywhere!

Of course one paper doll is lonely by herself and Jimsi had to make the lady doll a sister. This time, she chose a fashion print that had light hair. But she made the paper doll as she had made the other. It was terribly exciting now! Jimsi had to make up her mind what kind of a dress to make for the first paper doll. She named her Mrs. Sweet. The sister was Miss Pretty.

At last, Jimsi thought Mrs. Sweet ought to have the dress with pink flowers and Miss[34] Pretty the one with yellow buds. She placed the doll—Mrs. Sweet—on the sheet of wall paper and outlined all around her with a pencil, making the skirt of the frock just a stylish ankle length. At the top where the shoulders were, Jimsi drew tabs to bend and hold the dress on the doll. Then she cut the dress out, making it have a V neck. The pink flowers were in a long stripe right down the front of the dress. They looked like a dainty trimming. But the dress still needed to be finished, so Jimsi found the box of crayons that thoughtful crow had left on the table and she made jiggles to represent lace, straight parallel lines to represent tucks, little dots to represent smocking. Black dots that were larger were buttons, of course. One could make almost any sort of trimming in this simple way. The black crayon could be very black indeed. One could make black velvet trimming? Oh, it was splendid fun! Jimsi was so occupied that she never even heard Aunt Phoebe open the glass doors of The Happy Shop and it was not till Aunt Phoebe stood right beside her that she was aware. Aunt Phoebe laughed. “Well, Jimsi, you found some of the magic, didn’t you? It’s exactly[35] ten minutes past twelve. Did you know it was so late?”

Jimsi held up the beautiful Mrs. Sweet in one hand and the handsome Miss Pretty in the other. “Oh, I’ve just begun,” she protested. “I haven’t done anything but start. See!——”

“Well, I’ve finished,” declared Aunt Phoebe. “I’ll help. Suppose I make some hats!”

So Aunt Phoebe made the hats. She made them by cutting big and little ovals out of the wall paper. Cutting a strip horizontally across the center, one could slip the doll’s head up through this and put the hat right on. Aunt Phoebe trimmed the hats she made with wall paper flowers or bows cut from paper or by drawing on them with crayon. There were big and little hats—some plain walking hats and others evidently meant for dressy occasions.

While Aunt Phoebe was helping with the hats, Jimsi cut a cloak for Miss Pretty. It must have been an opera cloak for it was loose and flowing and made of something quite silky. (For the wall paper had a satin stripe in it, you know.) It was an exceptional success.[36] Jimsi surveyed it happily. It was splendid. Such a cloak ought to cost at least—but how much do cloaks cost? It must be nice to be a paper doll and be able to dress so well in “just paper”!

Oh, yes, Jimsi made Mrs. Sweet a tailor suit all of plain brown wall paper and both of the dolls had separate skirts for shirt waists, kimonos, dressing-jackets and muffs. (The muffs were made of dark wall paper and were fat ovals with slits cut at either end so the doll’s hand could be slipped in.)

Aunt Phoebe and Jimsi were so very, very busy that they were both ever so surprised when suddenly the little white-aproned maid who worked by the day for Aunt Phoebe appeared at the door of The Happy Shop. “Lunch is served,” said she. And there was nothing but to leave the play and run as fast as possible to wash the paste off hands and give one’s hair a smart pat with a hurried hair-brush.

At lunch Jimsi announced that she was going to make little girl dolls next. She thought she would have three little girl dolls in her family: a baby, a middling-sized girl of ten or eleven, and an older girl of High School[37] age. “I’m going to have one boy,” she said. “Boys won’t be so much fun because their clothes are so plain. But I’ll make a waterproof coat for this one, an overcoat, and one or two plain suits. The papa doll can have the same kind.”

But Aunt Phoebe decided that Jimsi must run out-doors in the garden after lunch and then come in and take a nap. After that, of course, she could do anything she wished in The Happy Shop. Aunt Phoebe thought it might be pleasant to write Mother a letter. So the afternoon passed with the out-doors and the nap and the letter. Jimsi found the little girl dolls in the fashion papers and had them all ready to cut and paste next day, but by that time had flown by so fast that the evening had come and with it there were new interests to draw her away from paper dolls. There was the crow who came back mysteriously and whom Jimsi discovered sitting up high on one of Aunt Phoebe’s bookshelves; there was the going for stamps to mail the letter home. It was quite chilly and the stars in the night sky were bright like diamonds when the two came back and opened the front door at Aunt Phoebe’s. Jimsi hadn’t been[38] lonely at all—why the whole day had passed and she had been almost all the time alone. Only the time before lunch and just before dinner at night, had Aunt Phoebe been with her; yet Jimsi had been happy. The secret, Aunt Phoebe said, was that she had been busy with happy play and work. “That, as everybody knows, is the one way to keep glad—but there’s another, Jimsi. Maybe the crow’ll tell you what that is some day.”

[39]

IV
The Toy Furniture

The next day Jimsi dashed down to the Good Crow’s letter-box hoping for a letter. But there was none. Aunt Phoebe said that she thought the crow meant that there was no need for him to write till Jimsi needed a new kind of magic play. It was a bit disappointing not to find a letter in the mail-box, but Jimsi consoled herself. Aunt Phoebe was going to let her water the plants every morning. There was a cunning little watering-pot painted red. It stood in a corner of The Happy Shop. It was really fun to water the thirsty plants and watch to see that dead leaves were kept from them. After having done this little duty to help, Jimsi went to market again with Aunt Phoebe and then, afterwards, she was again in The Happy Shop to play at cutting doll dresses. Oh, she made the little girl dolls this time. They were made in the same way as the lady dolls. And she also made the gentleman doll[40] and the little boy. By that time it was lunch again. Oh, dear! There had been not a second yet to dress the boy doll!

And then came the out-door and the—yes, the horrid old nap! (Don’t you hate to take naps! I hope you don’t have to—but if you do, I do hope you’re good about it and that you don’t pout and act disagreeable. I do! The nap has to come, so you might much better be pleasant and happy about it and have nothing to be ashamed of.)

Jimsi believed in doing what she was told to do and, beside, that nap had been one of the conditions that governed the visit to Aunt Phoebe’s and The Happy Shop—and both Aunt Phoebe and Jimsi had promised.

When she woke up, Aunt Phoebe told her she could play in the shop till dinner-time, if she chose. It was rather damp and chilly out-doors. So Jimsi made the boy doll’s clothes and cut out the daddy of the family. That was a good afternoon’s work!

At bed-time, Jimsi was about to hop into the cosy white four-poster when, somehow, her hand began to feel under the pillow and there, my dear, there—there was a letter![41] How like the crow to make it a surprise and not put it in the letter-box downstairs!

By the light of the pink candle, Jimsi tore open the wee envelope and read:

Jimsi woke quite early the next morning, even before the sun began to shine through the boughs of the evergreens outside the window. It was first dusk and then soft pink and then came faint sunbeams that grew brighter and brighter. But the clock on the bureau was pointing to an early hour and Jimsi waited for Aunt Phoebe to move. She did not want to wake her, for she was a thoughtful[42] little girl—but she did want the crow letter that she knew must be in the mail-box in The Happy Shop!

Aunt Phoebe was so late in waking that Jimsi had to scurry to get dressed and couldn’t go downstairs at all after that letter. And then there was breakfast immediately. But afterwards—afterwards, she and Aunt Phoebe dashed to the mail-box that stood on the crow’s shelf in The Happy Shop. Sure enough, there was the letter!

Jimsi tore open the envelope—why, there was nothing written in it. It was just some diagrams of the promised furniture for the paper dolls—but wasn’t that worth getting! All the time, Jimsi had been wondering how to cut furniture. She hadn’t known at all. She had hoped the crow would send her the directions but here were just diagrams, the very things to puzzle over and use! Under each diagram was written what it would make and the diagrams were like this.

Of course, the Good Crow couldn’t draw very well but he did wonderfully considering that he had to write and draw with a claw instead of a hand, Jimsi thought. The idea of the crow’s drawing made her laugh. “Aunt[43]
[44] Phoebe,” she giggled, “that crow of yours is ever so funny! Imagine a crow’s drawing pictures! But I’m going to make the furniture and start right away!”

Toy Furniture: The Bed, the Chair and Stool were made from Wall Paper

Toy Furniture: The Couch, the Table, the Bureau

Diagram 1

So Aunt Phoebe shut the doors of The Happy Shop and went to her work while Jimsi began to puzzle over the crow’s diagrams. First there was the bed. That was to be cut from a long piece of paper about as long as a paper doll—the longest doll, of course. Jimsi decided that the very, very heavy wall paper might be used to make the toy furniture and she found some that was wood-color in the Magic Book.

She cut the bed’s legs about an inch and a quarter long and parallel with the length of the oblong piece of cardboard. Then, she bent the legs down and the rest of the ends upward to make baseboards. That made a paper bed.

But, somehow, when the bed was placed on its legs it sank under the weight of the paper dolls, so Jimsi made another bed out of cardboard and pasted the wall paper bed over it. That did splendidly!

She made a pillow of white wall paper and added a coverlet. (There might have been a[45] fancy blanket under the coverlet, of course. This would have been cut from some other paper with a pattern design upon it.)

The Paper Doll Furniture That Was Cut from Cardboard and Upholstered with Wall Paper

Jimsi made a table next. It was cut like the bed, but in finishing it, the footboard parts were entirely cut off. And then, too, the table had longer legs than the bed. It was made to fit the size of the dolls by measuring. It was necessary to cut the legs the length of the paper dolls from feet up to waist. The[46] table was measured to fit the big lady doll and the gentleman.

The chairs were a bit different: to make a chair one had to cut a piece of cardboard the least little bit smaller than a table—and not half so wide. One cut the front legs to fit below the table and cut off the bit of cardboard there as the table end was cut. The rear of the chair oblong was straight then. The next step was to cut legs of the same length as the front legs. These were bent down like the first and the part that remained was the back of the chair! Jimsi upholstered the chairs with fancy designs cut from other colored sheets of wall paper. It was jolly! Jimsi made enough chairs for all the doll family. Indeed, the dolls seemed most sociable as they sat in a row on The Happy Shop’s table!

A sofa could be made on lines like the chair, only making the cutting of the cardboard oblong wide and giving it the depth of the chair also. The sofa was likewise upholstered. Oh, the toy furniture was great! Jimsi longed to start a doll house and looked about The Happy Shop to see if she could find a place to lay it out. At last she did discover a place,[47] on the floor at one end of the shop. She fixed it up beautifully. Bits of wall paper design cut out in ovals and oblongs, fringed by snipping with the scissors, made rugs for the house. If Jimsi had only had a box of some kind—if she could have interrupted Aunt Phoebe to ask for it, she could have made carpets of wall paper and had wall paper curtains too.

When the house was done, Jimsi made believe that Mr. and Mrs. Sweet went to walk in the park. The park was all of the greenery of The Happy Shop. The ferns made a wonderful grove. All the Sweet children wanted to have a picnic there. So Jimsi made a white table cloth from the Magic Book’s paper and cut rounds for plates and funny snips of three cornered wall paper bits for sandwiches. And there was a big round cake too! Oh, yes-and some pies that were colored with crayons.

After Jimsi had played all this, it was lunch time and again the hours had flown by fast.

In the afternoon, when Jimsi went upstairs, right on top of her pillow there was another crow letter!

[48]

[49]A wave of shame came to Jimsi sitting there on the bed—Oh, dear! She wanted to run right down and clean up the shop. She remembered that those bits of paper did look untidy. Oh, dear! But the nap came first. Soon she was sound asleep.

Nothing of great importance happened the rest of that day, for Jimsi spent a large part of time in tidying The Happy Shop when she woke. Then she fixed up the paper dolls in the envelopes. And it was bed-time. That night, however, the paper dolls slept in beds all arranged on Jimsi’s dresser at bed-time.

When she went to sleep, she dreamed that she and the Good Crow were making toy furniture and that the crow was really using scissors with his claw. She woke up in the middle of the night laughing and Aunt Phoebe heard her and asked if anything was the matter. “It was just the crow,” chirped Jimsi. “I was dreaming of The Happy Shop and he was there cutting toy furniture for paper dolls.”

“I think,” Aunt Phoebe’s voice answered, “that maybe a real little girl playmate would appreciate paper dolls more, wouldn’t she[50]?” Jimsi said, “Yes,” and then drowsed off to sleep again, hoping that the Good Crow would tell her soon that she could go and amuse the little lame girl who lived somewhere nearby.

[51]

CHAPTER V
The Motion Picture Fun that the Crow Knew

SURE enough, there was a crow letter in the mail-box next morning! It was written on the same wee note paper with a real crow stamp that was drawn in pencil in the upper right-hand corner. Jimsi brought it to breakfast with her and read it aloud—exactly as if Aunt Phoebe didn’t know what was in it already! You know, that was the crow play always!

This was the letter:

“Oh, I’d love to go!” declared Jimsi. “When can I go?”

“As soon as we’ve had our walk,” Aunt Phoebe answered. “Maybe you’d like to do something else for Joyce and the Good Crow—would you?”

Jimsi nodded. “I’d love to!”

“Well, when we go to town, we’ll buy Joyce some crayons like yours and a bottle of five-cent library paste. You shall take them to her to work with and you can tell her the crow sent them.”

“Splendid!”

So they went to market and Jimsi bought the crayons in the ten cent store. She insisted on paying for them herself because she said that this time it was going to be her crow. Then, when they reached home, Jimsi wrote a crow letter to the little lame girl, Joyce, and did the crayons up with the five cent bottle[53] of paste that Aunt Phoebe insisted was her crow.

With a box full of paper doll envelopes and toy furniture, and Jimsi’s own crayons and scissors from The Happy Shop, the Magic Book rolled up to make a big package to carry under one arm, Jimsi ran over to the third brown house from the corner and rang the bell. It was rather a dingy little house. It did not look pretty. It looked poor and sad.

But when the door opened, it opened on the most cheerful room you can imagine. It was Joyce’s mother who opened it. She wore a big white apron as if she were busy working and she beamed down at Jimsi standing on the steps with her arms so full of the Magic Book and the box of paper dolls that she could hardly hold them.

“I came because the Good Crow wrote me a letter about Joyce,” stated Jimsi. “The Good Crow said she’d like to know about my paper dolls so she could play at making dresses too. So I came.”

“Oh, come right in, little girl,” invited Joyce’s mother. “Yes. The crow sent Joyce a letter yesterday to say that his friend, Jimsi,[54] was coming over with a magic book. We’re very glad you came, aren’t we, Joyce?”

Jimsi hadn’t seen Joyce but now she looked toward the window and saw a wheel-chair with a beautiful dark-haired girl of twelve propped up in it and holding out a welcoming hand. “I’m ever so glad you came,” she laughed. “Don’t you love the Good Crow? I do. Miss Phoebe’s ever so lovely, I think. She’s every day thinking up something nice for me to do, almost. There’s sure to be a crow letter full of fun whenever I need it most.”

“Yes,” declared Joyce’s mother. “I don’t know what I’d do, if it weren’t for the Good Crow who belongs to Miss Phoebe. There’s only one thing Joyce wants do do when she isn’t reading. It’s checkers! I’ve played more games of checkers than you can shake a stick at, Jimsi! But when the crow letters come with new suggestions for things to do—why, you know, Joyce doesn’t want to read or even play checkers! The Good Crow’s play is best of all. Tell Jimsi about the motion picture play, darling!”

Motion picture play! Why the very idea of it! Goodness, how interesting! Do you know[55] anything that is nicer than motion pictures! At once Jimsi was wide awake and eager. “Oh, I want to know about the motion picture play!” she exclaimed. “Oh, please do tell me! Was it really true moving pictures?”

“Yes,” asserted Joyce, “they were real, weren’t they, Mother? But the pictures weren’t photographs at all. You wait and I’ll show you my motion picture screen and my whole outfit! Mother, will you get them for me, please?—You see, Jimsi, it was in the fall when the crow told me about these pictures. In summer I can go outdoors and once Daddy wheeled me into town and they let me see the motion pictures. (I can’t go often because it is such a long ride for me.) Well, I could think of nothing else afterwards but how much I wanted to go again! You know how it is.”

Jimsi wagged her head hard, “yes.” She didn’t want to interrupt the story.

“One day when Miss Phoebe was over here, I told her about how I wanted to go to motion pictures again and Miss Phoebe said she’d see what the crow could do about it— You know how Miss Phoebe makes believe always[56]!”

Again Jimsi nodded. “I love to make believe the way auntie does,” she beamed. “Please tell me what happened next.”

“Well, next, of course, came a crow letter. I found it in a bunch of flowers Miss Phoebe sent over.” (Joyce was trying to cover up the things that her mother had laid in her lap. Jimsi’s eyes had been busy with the details. There looked as if paper dolls were there.)

“You mustn’t peep,” admonished Joyce. “It won’t be a surprise if you see. It was a surprise for me! I didn’t know that one could really make motion picture fun right at home—not till Miss Phoebe’s crow wrote me a play letter about it.”

“Well, I can’t see how you do it!”

“You can do it with the papers in the Magic Book,” declared Joyce.

“Oh, have you a magic book too!”

They both laughed. What fun!

“I wonder if yours is like mine?” questioned Jimsi. “I didn’t know you had a Magic Book too, so I brought mine along with me! I was going to tell you about how to make paper dolls and toy furniture from the papers in my Magic Book!”

“Oh, I’d love to know how,” beamed Joyce.[57] “I think paper dolls are just the nicest play—almost. You must show me about them. I don’t know how to make them. The crow never told me. But he did tell me about the motion pictures and I made this—” she held up for Jimsi’s examination now a picture frame that was about twelve inches long and eight inches wide. At the back of the frame where the glass had been, there was stretched some heavy white cloth-cotton cloth. Back of this,[58] where one would place the picture, if one were framing one, was the glass that fitted the picture frame.

The Motion Pictures That Were Cut from Wall Paper

Joyce turned the frame over. “You see,” she explained, “when I hold it front-face, it looks exactly as a motion picture screen does, doesn’t it?—That’s before the picture play begins!”

Yes, it was true. The frame looked like the frame of a motion picture screen.

“The difference is,” went on Joyce, “that the crow’s motion pictures aren’t photographs. They’re really shadow pictures. One cuts silhouettes out of heavy wall paper that is in the Magic Book—oh, everything—and then one puts the chairs or tables, or cupboards next to the glass to make the screen. (I always have a little paper curtain that I put before my frame while I arrange this. It is like the big curtain in the theatre because it shuts off the picture screen.) When I have arranged the furniture and am ready to make the actors walk about in the room, I take the paper away so the audience can see.”

“How splendid!” sighed Jimsi, delightedly. “I think Henry’d be quite crazy about this sort of thing. He’s my brother, you know.[59] He’s a boy, so he thinks paper dolls are girls’ things and he won’t play with them. Do you use paper dolls? I should think that it would be hard to make them move about behind the furniture. I should think it would show that somebody was moving them.”

“It doesn’t though— You’ll see!” Here the little lame girl took the frame. “Don’t look,” she admonished with a raised forefinger. “Pretend you’re interested in the cat!”

Indeed, Jimsi hadn’t noticed the cat before. But now she ran over to the big open fireplace where pussy was purring before the wood fire. Joyce’s mother was sewing on a machine. She seemed very busy indeed. Jimsi waited for her new friend to give the word. She stroked the comfortable tabby and thought how wonderful it was that a sick girl who couldn’t go about except in a wheel-chair could be so cheerful and so happy. “I hope if I’m ever sick like that that I won’t be a whiney person,” she thought. “It’s splendid to be happy and glad when things are like that and you know you aren’t going to be able to run about and play—ever. Oh, I like the crow’s little lame girl wonderfully!” And it did seem strange that the little lame girl[60] was telling Jimsi about her play even before Jimsi had told the little lame girl about hers!

But right here, Joyce sang out, “Ready!” so Jimsi forgot the pussy cat instantly and sprang to her feet.

“I put the frame on a table when I have a real motion picture performance,” Joyce explained. “But you can see in the daylight better if I hold the frame in the sunlight. Look!”

Sure enough! There was the furniture in a small room: table, chair, cupboard! They were outlined in shadow.

“One ought to have motion pictures in the dark,” Joyce laughed. “I used to play that way last fall. I lit a candle in the dark and placed the candle behind my frame on the table. Then I moved the actors about so—”

Jimsi watched. Joyce had a paper doll-like actor cut in outline. To the back of this was pasted a strip of heavy paper. As she moved the doll across the back of the motion picture screen, holding it by the long strip of cardboard, one could only see the figure move across the little room. One did not see the hand that moved it or the strip of cardboard by which it was held.

[61]

Jolly! I should say so! Why, that was exactly the best fun Jimsi had ever seen!

“Hurrah for the crow!” she chuckled. “Why, I think that’s better than paper dolls—almost!”

“I’ll show you some more,” the little lame girl volunteered. “You just wait.”

Again she changed the things that lay beside the white cloth and the glass. When Jimsi looked, she saw that now there was out-door scenery: bushes, trees, a fence. Why, it might have been a street in a little town!

“I’ll show you something else!”

This time, the “something” was an automobile.

As Joyce held the frame in the clear sunlight, its shadow on the screen was plain. As Jimsi watched, the automobile rushed rapidly across the screen from one end of the frame to the other! Oh, what fun! And the shadow people in it seemed evidently out for a joy ride. One wondered that the automobile didn’t spill them out till Joyce turned the frame around and showed Jimsi that the automobile was cut out of heavy paper and that it and the people were all one piece!

“I’d like to see one of your motion picture[62] plays,” declared Jimsi. “Can’t you start one and make it go right through from beginning to end?”

“If it were only dark, I could,” said the little lame girl. “But you see Mother needs the light for her sewing just now. So we can’t draw the curtains. I’ll show you my scenery instead. Some other time we’ll make the whole motion picture play— Wouldn’t it be fun for the paper dolls, when I have made mine! Your paper dolls and mine can go to see the pictures: we’ll have a big time! Maybe, we can make up a new play and I can show you how to cut the scenery for it—shall I?”

“What plays have you made?”

“Well,” said the little lame girl, “you know I read a great deal. I make the plays of the stories that I read. I made Alice in Wonderland for one. I traced the pictures from the illustrations in my book and cut them out of heavy wall paper. (One can use cardboard for furniture and scenery and actors, only it’s more expensive, you know.) I traced most of my actors but not all. Some I had to draw—I’m not very good at drawing because I never had lessons. Mother says, she thinks[63] I could draw if I did have lessons but I just do the best I can without.”

“I think,” Jimsi insisted, “I think that you must know how to draw pretty well to cut out outlines of people from paper.”

“Oh, no,” contradicted Joyce. “Sometimes I can’t think the way things ought to look. Then I go through some pictures in a book and when I find an outline that will be good to use, I copy it. Or else, sometimes, I just double a piece of thin paper and cut out the way little children do to make paper dolls when they make both sides exactly alike. Mother used to make dolls in strings that way when I was small.”

“I saw Alice in Wonderland in moving pictures,” said Jimsi. “It was the crow who gave us all tickets once when Aunt Phoebe was visiting us. And I saw Cinderella with Mary Pickford. Did you?”

The little lame girl smiled. “Yes, the Good Crow gave me a ticket for it, and Mrs. Smith who has an automobile carried me up there. Wasn’t it lovely!”

The two little girls gazed into each other’s eyes, beaming. “After that, I made a play of Cinderella,” said Joyce. “Mine was just[64] a kind of paper doll play, but I had ever so much fun doing it. Sometime, I’ll show it all to you when it is dark and we can use a candle. Here’s the fairy godmother!”

She held up a silhouette doll cut with a long cloak and a pointed hat. The godmother had a wand in her hand. One would have known anywhere that it was Cinderella’s fairy!

“Here’s the pumpkin,” Joyce explained. “See! And here’s the coach! And here’s Cinderella before the fairy transformed her! (I had to make a second Cinderella figure for the play after the fairy touched her with the wand.) The way I do this is to change the figures very quickly. It takes a good deal of skill to act it out right. I had long times when I practiced with the figures last autumn. Then, when I thought I could do it perfectly, I’d give a motion picture play for Mother and Daddy in the evening. Often Miss Phoebe would come in to see my plays. She liked them. She used to help me sometimes. She thinks it’s fun!”

“We could make Red Riding Hood into a motion picture play,” suggested Jimsi. “We could make the bushes for the woods by cutting the paper out irregularly like the outline[65] of bushes if one saw them in shadow. You cut trees, didn’t you?”

The little lame girl assented. “I’ve cut trees and fences and little hills and the outlines of houses and—oh, ever so many things more than I can think of. In Alice in Wonderland, I really made a rabbit hole and when Alice was in the field, I made the funny rabbit go walking by and go down it and I made Alice follow him and—”

“How did you ever do it!” exclaimed Jimsi. “I don’t see how you did that!”

“You see how I made the field by putting bushes and a fence in the frame, don’t you?”

Jimsi nodded.

“The rabbit hole was a kind of oval with the middle part cut out,” went on the little lame girl. “All I had to do to make the rabbit go down was to pass the rabbit figure right into the centre of that and then draw him quickly away out of sight. It was the same with Alice. And oh, I did have such a splendid Pool of Tears with the mouse swimming in it! I made the Walrus and the Carpenter and Humpty Dumpty and everything!”

“What play could we give?”

“We might make one up[66]!”

“What would it be about?”

They wondered.

“It would be harder to make one up than to copy a story,” thought Jimsi.

“I tell you what we could do,” suddenly flashed Joyce. “It isn’t exactly a play, but it would be fun even if it wasn’t a real story. We could make Mother Goose motion pictures!”

“That sounds nice,” agreed Jimsi. She waited for the little lame girl to explain.

“We’d cut out a scene for Mother Hubbard’s house, you know,” pursued the little lame girl. “Then when we’d made the cupboard and the chairs and things, we could cut out Mother Hubbard and the dog and make a motion picture of it—just a short one.”

“And Jack and Jill Went Down the Hill!”

“And The Lion and the Unicorn!”

“And Little Bo-Peep and Little Boy Blue, too.”

“And—and—”

But right here, just exactly as Cinderella’s clock had struck twelve strokes, so the clock on the mantel of the little lame girl’s fireplace struck, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding—DING![67]

Oh, dear! There it was exactly the time when Jimsi had promised Aunt Phoebe to come home!

She jumped from her chair. “Oh, I was having such a good time,” she declared. “I didn’t know that it was anywhere near twelve. Oh, dear! I hate to say good-bye. I’ve had a perfectly splendid time—but I haven’t shown you my paper dolls at all! And the crow told me to show you my crow play and here I’ve just been listening to yours! But I’ll leave my paper dolls for you to look at and the toy furniture too. You’ll see how it is done. Then, some time when I come over, I’ll take them back. I’ll take my Magic Book home with me. Good-bye and thank you!”

“Come back soon,” sang the little lame girl as Jimsi turned to wave from the street. “Come soon!”

Then Jimsi waved a frantic and happy “Yes,” and sped back to Aunt Phoebe’s. She burst into the study where Aunt Phoebe was putting away her papers and clearing her desk. “Oh, oh,” she laughed, “do you know what I think, Aunt Phoebe?”

She waited.

“I think,” she beamed, “that your crow is[68] about the nicest crow ever! The little lame girl told me all about the motion picture play he gave her and I didn’t even have a chance to tell her about the paper dolls! We hadn’t half begun to play when the clock struck twelve! Oh, dear! I didn’t want to come right away—but I tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to write to Henry and tell him about the crow’s motion pictures. He’d love to make them. He could act out Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island.”

[69]

CHAPTER VI
The Valentines of the Happy Shop

OF course after the first visit to the little lame girl’s home, Jimsi made ever and ever so many others. They not only made paper dolls and paper dolls’ furniture and paper dolls’ dresses and furnished paper dolls’ houses and had paper doll motion pictures but they did other things with their Magic Books, too.

Once, they tried kindergarten weaving with strips that they cut out of colored papers. Another time, they twisted long strips of the wall paper to make old-fashioned “lamp-lighters” for Joyce’s mother to use in lighting the fire in the fireplace. It was when they were doing this one day that, suddenly, Jimsi gave a big bounce out of her chair. She jumped up and down and up and down in the funniest excited manner, and she kept squealing delightedly, “Oh, I’ve got an idea! I’ve got an i-dea[70]!”

“What!” exclaimed Joyce. “WHAT IS IT?”

“Um-m! Um-m!” came from the happy Jimsi. “Oh, you guess!”

“I can’t guess!”

“Oh—no, you can’t guess! You wouldn’t think of it! Oh, it’s lovely—splendid—scrum-ti-fer-ous!”

“Well, what is it?” The little lame girl was almost impatient but she was as glad as Jimsi to prolong the suspense. She knew that Jimsi was making the most of her discovery.

“It couldn’t be better if the crow had written about it,” she asserted, stopping to sit down beside the little lame girl’s table. “I’ll tell you what it is: It’s VALENTINES! It’s VALENTINES! All the beautiful fancy papers are just the thing to make valentines! Think how beautiful valentines will be when they’re made out of the flowered papers! Let’s try it! We can save the valentines till we need them—put them away in a box or, I’ll tell you what!—Why couldn’t we send them up to The Children’s Home for a valentine party? Once I went with Daddy to an entertainment at The Children’s Home.[71] I felt as if I’d love to do something for the children there. It’s so—so very unhomelike!”

The Valentines and Cards That Were Made out of Wall Paper

“It would be splendid to do that,” agreed Joyce. “Let’s begin right away. You take your Magic Book and I’ll take mine. You can spread newspapers on the floor so we won’t make a clutter and let’s see who can make the prettiest. We’ll have a valentine exhibition afterwards and invite Miss Phoebe and the crow.”

“All right[72]!”

The leaves of the magic wall paper sample books turned and turned. There were squeals of delight from Joyce and chuckles from Jimsi. “Oh, I’ve found something that will be lovely!” one would cry. “Oh, look at this!” the other exclaimed. And the little lame girl’s mother who was called to admire couldn’t tell which was the prettiest paper—you see both were lovely!

First the little lame girl found some paper that had sprays of yellow roses on it. She cut out a big heart that was figured all over with them. It really was a beautiful, beautiful valentine.

Jimsi suggested that if one were to color the edge all around with green crayon, that would give the valentine a good finish. One could use the crayon to print on the valentine too.

Then, Jimsi improved on Joyce. She folded her paper double and cut her heart out double, making the top of her valentine heart touch the crease of the paper. Her heart opened with two sides. Inside, she wrote a verse. At the top she tied ribbon bows, using some very narrow baby ribbon that she had in the paper doll box.

[73]

Joyce made valentines like it only she put pictures as well as verses inside the double heart. Some of the verses she made up. Others, she copied from old valentines that were in her scrapbook.

After they had tried all manner of heart valentines, made of plain papers, flowered papers, papers with designs, papers with figures, striped papers, cross-barred papers, they decided to try something different. Jimsi cut out a diamond-shaped figure from her paper. It was really lovely. It was a basket of daisies. The diamond was bordered with blue and Jimsi cut diamond-shaped pieces of white paper and put them at the back of the picture with a verse—the old, old verse that everybody changes. It begins:

Jimsi changed it to:

It wasn’t a very wonderful verse but it was a real valentine verse and it fitted the picture of the valentine perfectly.

After Jimsi made her diamond-shaped valentine,[74] Joyce tried to make one. She found a cross-pattern of little rosebuds in her Magic Book. She cut the valentine out like a diamond-shaped book and put leaves in it. The leaves were tied in with ribbon. From the centre of the front of her valentine, she cut out a wee diamond in the paper and it made a most fascinating opening into which one could peep and see a picture that was pasted inside. Of course, she used the crayons to finish the edge in color. Jimsi and she discovered that the crayoning of all rims gave finish to the cards.

And so the play went on and on. They made valentines that opened square like books. They cut bunches of flowers from the wall papers that had large floral patterns and then, too, they cut out bits of wall paper shaped like baskets. These they filled with wall paper flowers and tied at the top of the basket sometimes bits of narrow baby ribbon that they had treasured for doll-play. Oh, they made a fine lot of valentines—almost fifty! It didn’t take long to make a valentine, once one had chosen a paper to use for it.

“Oh, we can make Easter cards too,” suggested Joyce, when the valentine pile was[75] grown quite large. She started out to see what she could do. Oh, yes! One could easily cut out pretty colored Easter eggs and paste them on heavy white paper to make clusters of dyed eggs. One could cut Easter eggs that had flowers on them as one had made hearts with flowers in pattern. One could cut colored bunnies out of the paper too. To do this, Joyce used the brown and yellow and the white wall papers in her Magic Book. It was fun!

“We could make birthday cards too,” said Jimsi. “Only I won’t try it because they’d be the same as the Easter cards that just have flower patterns and open like a book.”

“We could make Hallowe’en favor cards,” Joyce cried, suddenly. And then, they began to cut out witches and cats and jack-o’lanterns. Why, one never knew what would come next! The two little girls worked away. “Just for fun, let’s see what we can do,” they agreed. So they cut hatchets for Washington’s Birthday greetings; they cut New Year’s cards and flowered Christmas cards. They cut holly leaves from green wall paper and made red berries for wreathes from the red wall paper; they cut Thanksgiving favors too!

[76]

It really isn’t possible to tell all that the two very busy little girls did do that morning. At noon when the clock struck twelve, the jolliest thing happened. The door-bell rang and when Joyce’s mother went to answer it, there on the door-step was a big market basket with a cover on it! When Joyce saw it she declared, “Well, I know that’s from Miss Phoebe’s crow!” Anybody would have known it for on top of the basket was a wee letter. The letter was addressed to Jimsi and Joyce. It read:

[77]The two little girls cleared the table of the valentines and cards. Jimsi ran about picking up stray bits of paper that had flown to remote places beyond the newspapers. Joyce arranged the things on the table. It was moved close to her chair.

My, my! Such tempting sandwiches! And such dainty paper table-cloth and napkins, and paper plates! “There’s only one thing lacking,” declared Joyce, as she laid an extra plate at one end of the table for her mother. “Miss Phoebe ought to be here too!”

“Yes, she ought,” assented Jimsi. “Aunt Phoebe and the Good Crow!”

[78]
[79]

CHAPTER VII
The Embroidery Patterns in the Magic Book

IN the days that passed after Joyce and Jimsi made the valentines and cards, ever so many things happened. They played other things beside crow plays—checkers and dominoes and Messenger Boy games. But, after all, the Magic Book with the fun in it was best of all. Crow had written them both letters and in his last letter he had said:

Jimsi went over and over the Magic Book in The Happy Shop wondering what she could find to do with the papers. It seemed as if almost everything must have been done when paper doll dresses, paper doll furniture, cards, and motion picture play had been done!

Aunt Phoebe wouldn’t even give her a[80] hint. “Do as the crow says, dear,” she urged. “Put on your thinking-cap!”

“But I can’t think!” declared Jimsi. “I did make up the valentines!”

“Try to find something else. The crow and I might help but we want you to have the fun of discovering all for yourself!”

But Jimsi couldn’t find anything more to do. She spent the morning looking over the papers and then she wrote a letter to the crow and put it in the mail-box.

To this letter the crow replied the next day in a little letter that Jimsi found in the mail-box. The crow’s letter said:

To this Jimsi replied in another letter to the crow:

[82]Then, having mailed this letter in the crow mail-box, Jimsi put on her cloak and cap and rubbers and went over to see Joyce. Joyce had her workbasket out and she had some bits of linen in her lap.

“Hello, Jimsi,” she greeted. “I was just wishing for you frightfully hard. The crow told me to hunt for a new amusement in the Magic Book and I found something I’m just wild to try. I think it’s going to go splendidly!”

“What is it?” Jimsi inquired. “Scrap-pictures?”

“No, not scrap-pictures! It’s nicer than scrap-pictures! Scrap-pictures aren’t anything!”

“Well, I can’t guess it,” declared Jimsi. “The crow wanted me to find something in my Magic Book, but I looked and looked and couldn’t find anything but scrap-pictures. Maybe your book is better than mine. The papers that are in your book and my book are quite different.”

“Don’t you like to do fancy-work?” inquired Joyce, suddenly changing the conversation and indicating her workbasket.

[83]

“Why, yes,” returned Jimsi. “But that can’t be done with wall paper!”

“Yes it can!” shouted the little lame girl. “I found patterns and patterns for fancy-work in my Magic Book, I did!”

“Well, well, well!” ejaculated Jimsi. “I never! Who would have thought of it! How do you find patterns for fancy-work?”

“I just look for them,” Joyce said. “You see, I was puzzle-hunting for something new to do with the Magic Book. The crow told me to use my own eyes and try to discover my own fun. I was turning the leaves of the book and all of a sudden I came to this.” The little lame girl turned the leaves of her magic wall paper book that lay on the big table beside her. “See,” she pointed, “there’s an embroidery thing to do: it’s one of those little bows with hanging ends that ladies wear at their necks to finish their collars. I could trace that all off and transfer it with carbon paper to a piece of linen and then do outline stitch of the pattern and finish the linen edge with button-hole stitch. That’s number one!”

“I could make one for Mother, couldn’t I?” said Jimsi. “Let’s both try it. You can give yours to your mother or to Aunt Phoebe.[84] Aunt Phoebe wears those bow-things. She has ever so many in her bureau drawer. She wears them with shirtwaists.”

Embroidery Patterns and Stencil Designs That Were Found in Wall Paper

“Well, I haven’t finished yet about the patterns—look here,” declared Joyce, and again she turned the pages of the Magic Book and stopped at a page of colored design. “Here’s number two!”

“What is it—I don’t know. I can see that[85] it could be a pattern for embroidery, but—Oh, yes, I do know what it is! It is a doily pattern! Isn’t it?”

“Hurrah!” sang Joyce. “You guessed! It is! All one has to do is to cut out the pattern and then take a sheet of carbon paper and transfer it to a piece of square linen. If you cut the design out larger, it can be used for a linen sofa-pillow with the four little clover things worked in each corner like the pattern in the wall paper. It would be easy embroidery—I could do it! I can’t do difficult needle-work. And, of course, if one didn’t have carbon paper or know how to use it, one could copy the design with tissue paper and trace it that way—sometimes carbon paper that one uses makes a blue spot on the cloth, if one leans on it with any pressure.”

Jimsi was looking hard at the doily pattern. “Do you know about stencils?” she asked.

“No,” replied the little lame girl. “What are they?”

“They’re designs that are cut out of stiff paper or tin or wood. You take a paint brush and paint over the openings and it makes a reproduction of the design. I think we could cut that pattern out and make a stencil pattern[86] of it. Maybe the paper’s thick enough. Let’s try!”

“All right,” returned Joyce. “But, first, let’s see the embroidery. We can try stencils afterwards.”

Jimsi agreed. “Let’s see the rest.”

“Well, here’s number three,” indicated Joyce. “That is a cross-stitch pattern. Do you do cross-stitch? It’s easy to do. That’s the stitch they use to make pictures on samplers. You’ve seen samplers?”

“Aunt Phoebe has one in her study. It’s framed. The little girls used to work them long ago. That was the way they learned to sew—by making samplers.”

“I can show you cross-stitch,” Joyce volunteered. “You won’t even have to transfer this cross-stitch pattern. It’s quite plain even though it isn’t all little crosses in the wall paper. It would be pretty embroidered on the end of a guest-room towel. Miss Phoebe showed me one she was doing once. It had flowers on it something like these.”

“And the cluster of flowers in the wall paper might be used on something else.”

“Or one could take one’s choice.” The little lame girl reached for her tissue paper.[87] “I’m going to try to transfer the doily pattern first. I’ll make the doily, I think. I’m going to do it and you can watch, if you like. I’ve often transferred patterns.”

The little lame girl placed her tissue paper upon the design in the wall paper and followed her pencil very carefully along the outline beneath. “One ought to use a soft pencil,” she explained. “The hard pencils don’t transfer so well.” And then she lifted the tissue paper up and showed Jimsi the design that she had taken off the wall paper in pencil. “To trace it,” she said, “all one has to do is to turn the tissue paper over and go over the outline again, placing the first pencil marks next the cloth. Then when one goes over the tissue paper’s pencil outline, the pencil marks under the point of the pencil are pressed on the cloth—and there’s your pattern!”

“Let’s try it,” Jimsi urged. “You start the doily and I’ll make the bow-thing in a pattern for Caw Caw to send Aunt Phoebe. Then I want to try stencils.”

They were both silently busy for a long time. Joyce transferred her design to a piece of white linen that her mother had given her. Jimsi labored over the neck-bow pattern that[88] she wanted to send Aunt Phoebe in a crow letter. She copied her design on a sheet of white pad paper.

“What color shall I use to outline my design?” suddenly inquired Joyce. “It could be almost any color.”

“Why most any color,” thought Jimsi. “How about white or blue?”

“We have blue china,” mused Joyce. “I’ll do it in blue. Do you know, if I wanted to, I’d turn it into a top to put on a square pin-cushion—I could!”

The two little girls laughed. Oh, the Magic Book was proving very magic indeed! Very magic!

“Now, while you sew, I’m going to try stencils and see if I can make them out of wall paper designs. I think I can! Stencils are ever so easy to use. They’re splendid fun, if you like to paint.”

“Well, go ahead. I’ll watch.”

So Jimsi took a piece of the paper that she found in the little lame girl’s Magic Book. “It’s queer paper,” she mused, “all glossy. I think it must be the kind they use in papering kitchens and bath-rooms. It’s stiff and exactly right for stencil-cutting. You know[89] there’s a special knife that comes to use for cutting stencils but I’m using scissors. I think this doesn’t need a knife. It’s easy to cut with scissors if you leave the edges clean-cut. I’m leaving the paper and only cutting out the form of the design.”

All the eight squares in the wall paper pattern, Jimsi cut carefully out. Next, she cut around the edge of the tulip-flower that was in the center of the pattern design. And she cut out the tulip leaves, too. “This is number four,” she laughed. “Hooray! It’s done! Now tell me where your paints are and I’ll show you something!”

The paints were in the big table drawer and Jimsi went to fetch water. She asked for a bit of blotter and the little lame girl told her where to find it.

“You have to dry your paint brush on the blotter before painting stencil designs,” explained Jimsi, “otherwise the paint runs all over. Always use a dry brush—I mean as dry as will paint!” She shook her brush at Joyce as if she were a teacher at school with a pencil trying to drum a lesson into a lazy pupil. They smiled at the fun.

“I’ll remember,” sang out the little lame[90] girl, repeating the lesson, “‘Always use as dry a brush as possible when you’re painting water-color stencils.’ Oh, I know my lesson, teacher!”

“Pay attention!” Jimsi made believe she was frightfully severe. “Now, watch me!” She took the stencil, placed it on top of some white pad paper, passed her brush with the water-color over the stencil openings and drew the stencil off. “There!” she exclaimed, “Isn’t that fun!”

The little lame girl beamed. “Yes,” she agreed. “I’d like to try that—but why can’t you cut out your own patterns—I mean patterns that you make up out of your own head when you want to draw?”

“Well, if you can draw, you can. You see the wall paper can be used to make stencils. When I was little Mother showed me how to cut fancy cut-out designs with scissors by folding a square piece of paper over and over and then snipping bits off the edge here and there. That would make a stencil and one could cut one in wall paper like that. All one would need to do would be to paint over the openings after the paper was smoothed out flat.”

“And can you use the painted stencil patterns[91] for anything?” inquired the little lame girl.

“Why—just like embroidery patterns,” said Jimsi. “My teacher at school taught us how to use them. We decorated lots of things like linen hand-bags, pillows and little fancy Christmas gift things. But we used oil paints. With water-color, one can stencil packages of blotters and tie them together for a gift. One can stencil paper picture-frames or letter-paper, I should think—oh, most everything.”

“The design you have there’s too big for letter paper,” Joyce objected. “Where can one find a small enough stencil for that?”

“Why, take the tulip right in the center!” laughed Jimsi.

Of course! Oh, what fun!

They tried it with some sheets of the little lame girl’s letter-paper and it was ever so pretty! And it really took no time to paint it. Hooray!

“Let’s write the crow a letter with a stencil at the top,” suggested Jimsi.

“And put your pattern in,” went on Joyce. “The one you were going to give your Aunt Phoebe[92].”

“Let’s write a round-robin letter: you write one sentence and then I’ll write the next!”

So they began:

Joyce addressed the envelope. Jimsi drew a crow stamp up in the corner. There never could be a real crow letter without a stamp in the corner—a stamp of a black bird with a letter in his bill.

“I’ve only a few minutes before lunch,” announced Jimsi, glancing at the clock. “I won’t wait for Cinderella’s number to strike. I’ll run along and then I’ll have a chance to put this under Aunt Phoebe’s plate before she comes to the table. Good-bye, dearest! I’m[93] so glad you discovered the stencils and the patterns.”

“No, you discovered the stencils and I discovered the patterns.”

“Well, crow will be pleased, won’t he?”

“Won’t he!”

“I wonder if crow knew there were patterns for embroidery in wall paper?”

“I wonder!”

And then Jimsi tore herself away from her friend and flung on her cloak and cap. The clock in the little lame girl’s room was just striking the hour of twelve—the hour when Cinderella had to give up her ball and run home at night, the hour when Jimsi had to give up her play and run home in the morning. She lifted her rubber in one hand and waved it before she put it on. “Cinderella’s slipper,” she smiled. “But it’s not made of glass and it isn’t going to fall off and be left for anybody to pick up!” Then she was gone.

[94]
[95]

CHAPTER VIII
The Scrapbooks Crow Told About

JIMSI had been so busy that morning that I do believe she had quite forgotten the all-important surprise that the good crow promised her in the afternoon. When she came home to Aunt Phoebe’s and put the round-robin letter under Aunt Phoebe’s luncheon plate, she thought of it. “I wonder what it can be,” she mused. “Oh, I do wonder.” Then she flew upstairs to wash the paint off her hands before the bell tinkled in the hall. She had just time to brush her hair and wash up. Then she heard Aunt Phoebe’s little maid going out to ring, ding-a-ling-a-ling!

Jimsi trotted softly downstairs and peeped into the dining-room. No! Aunt Phoebe had not found the crow letter yet! She was innocent about her plate—No! she didn’t know what was under it! Jimsi almost giggled, but she covered the giggle with her napkin and made it over into a cough.

[96]

“I’m afraid you’ve taken cold,” suggested Aunt Phoebe. “Have you had that cough long—I’m sure I should have noticed it”—

“No. I haven’t any cold,” protested Jimsi, “really I haven’t, Aunt Phoebe.” Here she felt again like giggling over the letter concealed under Aunt Phoebe’s plate and had to cough again.

“Well,” declared the play aunt, “I’ll have to stop that cough! Did you wear your rubbers?”

“Honest injun!”

“It isn’t anything—just—er—er—Oh, nothing!”

“I hope so.”

The talk drifted to the morning. “What did you and Joyce find to do?” asked Aunt Phoebe.

“We embroidered and painted.”

“You always have a nice time there, don’t you, dear?”

“Yes, Aunt Phoebe.”

Jimsi wanted to tell all about it, but—how could she till after Aunt Phoebe found the crow letter. She waited. After what seemed a long time, the little maid changed the plates[97] and lo—why there was a letter right under Aunt Phoebe’s plate!

“Oh, the mischief,” laughed Aunt Phoebe, “I do believe the crow has been here! Jimsi, was that why you were coughing, you sinner! I think you must have seen the crow leave it. Well, you wait! There’s a surprise coming to you, young lady!” And she tore open the letter. “I’ll read it to you, aloud, Jimsi,” she said. “Shall I?”

It was part of crow play to pretend one hadn’t any knowledge at all of having been the one to write crow letters that one saw afterwards. So Jimsi listened to the round-robin as Aunt Phoebe soberly read it and exclaimed how very lovely the note-paper was. When she came to the pattern, she was really delighted. “How clever of the crow,” she laughed. “I was wanting a new embroidery pattern and here the thoughtful crow has brought it. How kind of him!” She said she was going to transfer it to some linen right away. She was so interested that they went to look over Jimsi’s Magic Book to see if there were embroidery patterns and stencil designs in that as well as in the little lame girl’s book.

Yes, there were. The two of them became[98] so interested that nap-time almost passed. A whole fifteen minutes went by without either Aunt Phoebe or Jimsi’s knowing it. When the little desk clock gave a faint chime of two Aunt Phoebe jumped. “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “I must be off. Oh, Jimsi, how could you let me stay! Oh, you didn’t know—well, run right upstairs and take that nap and don’t come down till half-past three, remember!” With that Aunt Phoebe dashed into her cloak and hat. “I had a most important engagement to meet somebody! Oh, dear!” And she was gone.

Jimsi walked upstairs and took off her dress and put on her kimono. As her hand snuggled under her pillow, it met something long and hard. Jimsi grasped it and drew forth—a crow present! It was a stick of peppermint candy. She couldn’t go to sleep at first. She lay there with the peppermint stick wondering what the crow’s splendid surprise was going to be. She couldn’t guess at all. Finally, she remembered that she was honor-bound to go to sleep. Of course, one can’t always go to sleep when one wants to, but Jimsi began to try hard. She covered her head with the comforter and cuddled into a more cosy position.[99] She shut her eyes and then, the first thing she knew, Aunt Phoebe was bending over her saying, “Wake up, Jimsi! Wake up! You’ve had an extra long nap and crow has been to The Happy Shop and left you a surprise!”

So Jimsi jumped into her dress and tore down the front stairs two steps at a time. Oh, she knew it was going to be a splendid surprise—perfectly splendid! But she really wasn’t expecting the kind of a surprise that awaited her, for as she opened the doors of The Happy Shop who should pop up from behind a screen but Mother and Henry and little sister Katherine! Oh, Oh!

What a hugging there was! Why, they had to hug twice around and even Henry, who didn’t like to be kissed, seemed so happy to see Jimsi that he had to kiss her, too! How lovely and how lovely and how lovely! Oh, what fun! Now, Mother and Henry and Jimsi’s little sister could all see The Happy Shop and help find play in the Magic Book. Hadn’t Jimsi just been longing to have them all right there! Hadn’t she written them long letters about it! Oh, this was almost too good to be true!

“But how did you happen to come?” inquired[100] Jimsi. “Doesn’t Henry have to go to school?”

“Well, we all wanted to see our Jimsi,” Mother explained. “I couldn’t come without Katherine, and Henry wanted to see you so badly that I decided one day out of school wouldn’t hurt if he made up the work. So you can show us the crow plays and the Magic Book, Jimsi!”

“I want to see Crow!” urged little sister Katherine. So Jimsi took them to the shelf in Aunt Phoebe’s study where her big crow perched on the twig. The shelf was so high that baby Katherine thought the crow was really alive. He didn’t look stuffed. Even Henry was almost deceived. “Isn’t he really true?” he kept asking.

“Of course he’s true,” returned Jimsi. “Haven’t we always played crow ever since we can remember?”

But she didn’t refer to Aunt Phoebe’s crow as just a stuffed crow. He was a play crow, you know. There is a great distinction, even though you may not know it.

Henry wasn’t interested in paper dolls or paper doll furniture. But Katherine was.[101] Henry sniffed. “Oh, I don’t care for Magic Books that make paper dolls,” but Katherine wanted to look at them all. So did Mother. Finally, Mother decided to take Katherine over to the couch and let Jimsi and Henry play the shadow motion pictures—at least examine them. Katherine sat on a stool beside Mother, and Mother watched to see that no paper dolls were torn by clumsy little fingers that didn’t know how easily paper tears.

Aunt Phoebe had brought her fancy work pattern down to show Mother. She had a work-basket and was prepared to start her fancy work.

Oh, but wasn’t this splendid!

They had afternoon tea out in The Happy Shop, too. Jimsi and Henry and Katherine had cocoa—but Mother and Aunt Phoebe had tea, and the Good Crow had to be brought in and put close to the tea-table. Aunt Phoebe talked for him as she had on the night of Jimsi’s arrival. And the crow always said, “Caw-caw,” when he was addressed by any member of the circle. He was a beautiful play crow. Katherine would have liked to kiss him, but kissing him as hard as Katherine kissed[102] would hurt, Aunt Phoebe explained. She let the baby stroke the glossy plumage and say, “Pretty, pretty!” (You know an ordinary crow isn’t exactly pretty, but his plumage is a beautiful satiny black—all glossy. And Jimsi insisted that Caw Caw was beautiful.)

Henry said he didn’t think Caw Caw was pretty, but he thought the crow was good, all right. Henry, you see, was ever so interested in the motion pictures crow had invented, and he had to fix all the different plays that Jimsi had cut out and arrange the scenery on the motion picture screen. He thought this the greatest amusement. He wanted to try the play with a candle. Jimsi and he went off to a dark corner to work the motion pictures and they played Alice in Wonderland and made the White Rabbit run about in a most realistic way. Then, before they knew it was so late, they were called to dinner. How time does fly!

Just when they had finished dinner and desert was being served, Henry happened to look up at the crow perched on the shelf where Aunt Phoebe had put him—and if the crow didn’t have a letter in his bill!

“Why, look-look!” exclaimed Henry.[103] “Look!” There was nothing to do, once having seen it, but to jump up from the table right then and there to go get that letter.

It proved to be a letter to Henry. He read it aloud.

The Scrapbooks That the Children Made with Wall Paper Covers

At the close of this letter, everybody just laughed. It was so funny! But everybody was very anxious to try the scrapbooks, so they didn’t wait for morning. Henry made himself one that very night after dinner. His was made of beautiful red paper. It was most handsome! He made one for Mother and one to take home to Father from the crow. He made one, too, for baby Katherine to put picture cards into. Oh, I tell you Henry worked hard. He said he’d make one for Jimsi to carry to the little lame girl, but Jimsi said she thought Joyce might enjoy the fun of making her own. So Henry started to make himself another—when bed-time came! He declared he’d finish it in the morning. It was a very splendid scrapbook—or it was going to be—made with three whole sheets of nice fresh wrapping paper cut to be eight by fifteen inches. But he went off to bed to dream of it.[106] Oh, Caw Caw knew what children like to play!

They all said, “Good-night, Crow,” after they had kissed Aunt Phoebe and Mother good-night, and then all went to dream of Caw Caw making magic plays with the sample book of wall paper.

[107]

CHAPTER IX
The Pin-Wheels, Birds, Butterflies

THE next morning bright and early before breakfast, Henry was downstairs in The Happy Shop busy with the finishing of last night’s scrapbook. It had a handsome cover of dark wall paper with a design of large and splendid flowers and leaves colored purple and red and green and dull blue. To tie the cover on, Henry was using strands of raffia of the same shades. Aunt Phoebe did basketry and had quite a big basket full. The children were always welcome to use it. He was so interested that he just said, “Oh, hello, Jimsi!” when Jimsi came down later, just before the breakfast hour. She had come as soon as she was dressed for she wanted to look in the mail-box and see if there was a crow letter there. Henry had quite forgotten to look. He thought of nothing at all but his grand scrapbook.

Jimsi reached for the crow mail-box. Sure[108] enough, there was a letter in it. Hurrah! “Oh, look, Henry!” she exclaimed. “See!”

Henry jumped up and came to examine the mail-box, and he took the little blue envelope out. Oh, it was for baby Katherine this time! Nothing for Jimsi! Nothing for Henry!

They dropped the letter back into the box again. “Won’t it be fun to see her when she finds it?” laughed Jimsi. “I wonder what’s in Katherine’s letter?”

“Katherine can’t use scissors very well,” Henry suggested doubtfully. “She can cut some, but not very well. She’s learned some things in kindergarten. I hope the crow has told her something that you and I can do, too. I have made enough scrapbooks for now and I can’t begin to stick my stamps and things in till I go home, Monday. What are you going to use your scrapbook for, Jimsi?”

Jimsi thought. “Oh, I’m going to have more than one,” she answered. “The scrapbooks don’t cost anything and I can have as many as I like. I like them better than the ones that are sold in shops. They are prettier and they have more leaves. Once I wanted to buy a scrapbook and when I priced it, it cost two dollars! It was a big scrapbook like[109] the one you are making. Of course, I didn’t buy it. I couldn’t, for there wasn’t that amount of money in my bunny-bank on the mantel-shelf at home.”

“I’ve one dollar and seventy-three cents saved in my bank,” Henry volunteered. “I’ve earned twenty-eight cents just lately. Once it was for doing errands for the lady next door and once I swept the snow off the walk for her, too. She said I did it well and asked me to come next time it snowed.”

“Boys can always earn money,” sighed Jimsi. “It’s different with girls. Nobody asks them to shovel snow or do errands, if there is a boy anywhere around. I could sweep snow!”

“I know,” agreed Henry. “But there are things girls can do.”

“What?”

“Oh, girls can amuse little babies and take them riding in a go-cart and see that they are happy while the babies’ mother goes away out-doors for an hour. Mrs. Brown said she wanted a little girl who was a good responsible girl to do that for her. And once when Birdie Smith hurt her eyes studying with the sun shining on her book and[110] the doctor wouldn’t let her use them, Mrs. Smith said she would be glad to pay some boy or girl to come and read aloud to Birdie—because Birdie was always asking to be read to and she had work to do and couldn’t read to her all the time.”

“I could take care of babies,” Jimsi thought. “Having Katherine helps ever so much. I’d love to wheel a baby in a carriage out-doors, if its mother would trust me—I’d like it so well I’d do it without money.”

“That’s the way with girls. They aren’t businesslike,” sniffed Henry. “It’s business to pay for errands and shoveling snow and it’s business to be paid for taking care of babies, I think.” He tied the raffia that bound his scrapbook at the back of the cover and held it up. “I’ve finished,” he smiled. “See!”

“But if one likes to do things, one hates to be paid for doing them,” Jimsi protested. “I love to play with little bits of children, I do.”

“Well, I’m only telling you how girls can earn money,” said Henry. “You don’t need to take it, if you don’t want to. My, but I’m hungry! Isn’t it most time for pancakes? Aunt Phoebe said we were going to have pancakes this morning[111].”

“And real maple syrup—yum-yum!”

“Who said yum-yum,” called Aunt Phoebe’s voice. “Breakfast’s ready! Henry, will you get the big dictionary in my study and put it in Katherine’s chair for her to sit on. There isn’t any high chair in our house. Crow doesn’t need one.”

Off went Henry and Jimsi to do the errand between them. Mother and Aunt Phoebe and Katherine were waiting when the children brought the dictionary for Katherine to sit on.

“Nobody looked in the mail-box,” suggested Jimsi. “Somebody ought to.”

“Shall I go?” asked Mother.

“Shall I?” inquired Aunt Phoebe innocently.

“Me?” squealed Katherine joyously. “Me!”

“I’ll get the box,” volunteered Henry, the man of the household. “You wait.” And up he darted—off to The Happy Shop. He came panting back and put the box on the table.

“Who’s the letter for?” everybody asked at once.

Henry waved his hand majestically toward the baby. Everybody laughed. Katherine chuckled. She reached for the little cardboard[112] box and extricated the tiny envelope. “Ou!” she squealed delightedly. “Mamma, read it.”

So Mother broke open the wee envelope with its crow stamp on it, just as crow always wrote his letters and she read:

“No, we don’t,” interrupted Jimsi and Henry. But Mother went on:

The Butterfly Cut from Folded Paper, the Basket Cut from Folded Paper

The Bird Cut from Folded Paper with Wings Cut from a Second Piece of Folded Paper

Diagram 2

“Ou!” chuckled Katherine. “Store!”

“We’ll cut round disks for money—yellow paper for gold, silver striped paper for nickles, dimes, quarters and fifty-cent pieces. We’ll make green paper bills—”

“And write on each how much each is—”

“We can do it with crayon—”

“Hush!” sighed Mother. “I want to read Katherine’s crow letter. Listen!”

“Oh,” interrupted Jimsi, “we can make some butterflies for Katherine out of the wall papers that have plain patterns on them. Just[115] keep the patterns even and cut. That will make lovely wings! I want to try it—”

“Shoo!” cried Mother. “I want to finish the letter. My coffee is growing cold. Shoo!” Again she read:

“A crow!” chuckled Henry. “Only one would need black paper—”

“Take dark paper and crayon it black,” cried Jimsi.

“Hush!” Mother began again. “If anybody interrupts again, we’ll wait and finish the letter after breakfast,” said she. So everybody hushed right up and waited, of course.

Mother put the crow’s long letter on the table beside Katherine’s plate. She took up her coffee-cup and breakfast started. All the splendid pancakes had been getting cold! Aunt Phoebe had to send them out and get hot ones. And all because of Crow’s letter!

“I’ll make that money. I can do it,” Henry declared. “While I’m making the money, you and Joyce and Katherine can make the birds and pin-wheels and butterflies. I’m going to make splendid paper money—whole bags full! Oh! I can keep some to carry home to play store, too!”

“I don’t want any more breakfast,” sighed Jimsi. “I want to begin right away.” But, nevertheless, she did eat more hot pancakes and more than just two.

“Where’s crow?” asked baby Katherine, pointing to the shelf where Aunt Phoebe’s crow stood last night. “Where’s crow[117]?”

“Oh, he flies away during the day,” volunteered Jimsi. “He pretends fly away. Ask Aunt Phoebe where he is!”

The Bird, the Butterflies and the Pin-wheels That Were Made Out of Wall Paper

But Aunt Phoebe was making-believe about crow and she wouldn’t tell at all—no, not at all.

They tried to tease her—(It isn’t at all nice to tease, but boys will do it.) “Aunt Phoebe,[118] how could the crow hug Katherine?” giggled Henry. “I’d like to see crow do it!”

“He could pretend to in a crow letter,” answered Aunt Phoebe demurely. “Henry, if you don’t look out, you won’t get any new crow letters. If you don’t want to believe in my nice, old, stuffed black crow, Caw Caw, give me back all your splendid scrapbooks that he told you how to make.”

“Oh, I believe in make-believe,” Henry laughed. “But, Aunt Phoebe, it’s so funny! The idea of crow’s hugging Katherine with his two claws! Oh, oh! How could he stand?”

“He might sit on his tail and do it,” answered Aunt Phoebe. “Crows don’t usually sit on their tail, but Caw Caw might. He’s pretend.”

“Caw Caw’s all right,” declared Jimsi. “I think he can do most anything. He’s the cleverest crow that ever, ever was. There never could be another like him, I know!”

“Think of The Happy Shop and all the fun of the Magic Book!” smiled Mother.

“Dear Aunt Phoebe,” beamed Henry. “Please, I do want another crow letter. Tell crow to write soon!”

But Aunt Phoebe shook her finger at[119] Henry. “Naughty,” said she. “The next crow letter shall go to somebody else, not you!” She smiled.

By that time breakfast was over and the children rushed off to The Happy Shop to find the Magic Book and try the new crow play for little Katherine.

[120]
[121]

CHAPTER X
The May Baskets

JUST as soon as little Katherine had tried her pin-wheels indoors, Henry and Jimsi decided that outdoors where there is wind, pin-wheels would turn much better and faster, so the children jumped into cloaks and caps and made for the garden. It was still too early to go over to see the little lame girl. They all decided to wait and make the crow’s butterfly and bird toys when Joyce could try them, too. But the pin-wheels were really out-door toys and one had to run about to make them go.

Katherine had two pin-wheels, one in each hand. One was blue and pink and the other was made of flowered paper with green paper inside. Henry had a red and brown pin-wheel that he had made very large indeed. Jimsi’s pin-wheel was an attempt to be “different,” she said. She had tried to cut the edges in scallop. There was also a rosebud cut from wall paper, and it came at the center[122] of her pin-wheel under the pin. They all had great fun running about the garden in the crisp winter morning air, each trying to see which pin-wheel would turn best. Katherine’s flowered pin-wheel, it was agreed, was a huge success. Then, Jimsi’s broke. She had to go indoors to mend it and when she came out, she had her Magic Book rolled up tight under her arm. “We can go over to see Joyce, Mother says,” called Jimsi from the door-step. “Hurry up!”

So off they trotted.

As Jimsi had forgotten all about the crow’s surprise when she and Joyce were busy making stencils and embroidery patterns, it was perfectly unexpected for Henry and Katherine to appear behind Jimsi that morning when the door opened and let the children into the room where the little lame girl’s chair was rolled into the bow-window beside the big table. Why, at first Joyce just stared and then, laughing, she held out a hand to each. “Oh, I know now who you are! You’re Katherine and Henry,” she beamed. “But I didn’t know you were coming. Jimsi never told me there was going to be such a lovely party!”

“Oh,” Jimsi laughed. “Your patterns and[123] things were so interesting, I forgot to tell you crow promised me a big surprise. I forgot all about it till I went back to Aunt Phoebe’s. In the afternoon, I went down to The Happy Shop and I found that crow had brought Mother and Henry and sister Katherine for the surprise.”

“Well, well!” laughed the little lame girl, “and you didn’t suspect at all?”

“Not a weeny bit!”

“And it was a surprise for me, too,” declared Joyce. “Now, what are we going to do to have fun this morning?”

Little Katherine held out her two pin-wheels. “You can make these,” she suggested.

“Let’s try birds and butterflies! Oh, Joyce, the crow sent Katherine a letter this morning and it told how to make those pin-wheels and birds and butterflies, too,” explained Jimsi. “And Henry said he’d make toy money for a store and we could play that, too!”

“I wish it was real money,” Henry joked, as he snipped big pieces from Jimsi’s wall-paper book—big pieces of silver satin stripe for silver money. “I’m going to make five and ten dollar bills next. Oh, you wait!” He[124] sat down on the floor and began to cut regardless of the floor.

“Look out,” sang Jimsi. “Put a paper down, Henry! Joyce and I are careful. It makes ever so much muss to clear up when you cut like that. Here’s a newspaper.” So Henry meekly apologized. “I wasn’t thinking,” he explained.

Joyce and Jimsi began on butterflies. When they had made ever so many, they made birds—whole flocks of birds: bluebirds, crows, robins, catbirds, and most every kind of bird one could think of, as well as a good many pink and yellow birds that nobody could identify as ever having lived anywhere at all.

They pretended that the big table was a store and Henry brought all manner of things from around the room to put on it and sell, he said. Joyce was store-keeper. As for baby Katherine, she preferred to play on the floor with the paper toys, and she played in her own way.

Henry showed the little lame girl about how to make scrapbooks and they were busy choosing a paper for her first scrapbook when suddenly the door-bell rang. Joyce’s mother[125] went to the door. There was nobody there! Then her eyes suddenly fell to the door-step and there, sure enough, was a crow letter! Beside it was—why, it was the cutest of paper baskets! It was filled with cut flowers. The letter was for Joyce. The basket that came with it was, of course, for her, too.

Why, the basket was made out of wall paper! Would you believe it? Yes, it was! But the flowers in it were really, really true—they weren’t wall-paper flowers. Joyce took them from the basket and Jimsi went for a vase. “Why, we can make baskets like that,” she declared. “I think crow’s letter must be about it.” She tore open the envelope. She glanced over the letter. No. All crow said was:

“I’ll tell you what,” Joyce suggested. “Let’s each take some paper—the very heavy wall[126] paper—and we’ll see which one of us can make the best basket. We’ll try to make them like this. This one is cut from a piece of folded paper that is double. Its sides are sewed—see! I’ll give you each a needle. This basket is sewed with a strand of raffia, and the sides are buttonholed with it, but we can baste our baskets with big strands of colored darning-cotton or shoe-button thread. Let’s try it!”

All but baby Katherine tried it. She was playing with the butterflies on the rug by the fire. The pussy-cat was purring there. She, too, liked to play with the butterflies. Maybe it was because Katherine dragged them over the rug on a string as no butterflies ever flew! But she had a good time just the same.

“We could make May baskets like this,” Jimsi suggested. “I’m going to make some next spring. I’m going to show my teacher at school how to make these baskets. I think she’d like to know how. And the kindergarten teacher—Sister’s teacher—she’d like to know how, too. She could show the children how to make others like them.”

“We could make them for the Christmas tree this Christmas,” declared Henry. “Of[127] course those for the Christmas tree would need to be much smaller.”

“They would be cute for doll baskets, when we made them small,” beamed Joyce.

The May Baskets and the Flower-pot Cover That Were Made of Wall Paper

At the mention of dolls, Henry sniffed, “I don’t play dolls,” said he. “I like baskets that are useful. I tell you what you can do to earn money, girls! You can make these baskets to hold candy and sell home-made candy in them.” Really, Henry thought he had offered[128] a valuable suggestion! Both little girls laughed.

“They wouldn’t want to eat the kind I make!” chuckled Jimsi. “Beside that I’d probably eat it up first. And Mother doesn’t like to have us make candy. But I’ll tell you what: we could make them for fairs and bazaars if we were asked to give things to sell. The candy booth could use them. We could make ever so many in a short time. Why, it only took a minute to cut this one out and sew it!” She held up a dainty pink basket made of striped paper almost as stiff as bristle-board. “I suppose this paper’s ever so expensive, if it’s used on walls,” she said. “The heavy paper always is, you know. But there is a whole half of my Magic Book full of heavy paper samples.”

Baby Katherine liked the baskets. She put her butterflies inside. Henry carried his paper money in his. Jimsi cut paper flowers and put them in hers.

“I’ll send back the prettiest I can to Aunt Phoebe by you,” said Joyce. “It’ll show her that we used the crow play right away. And I’ll put a crow letter inside.”

After that was done, the clock began to[129] strike the Cinderella hour and the children, after hastily picking up careless scraps of paper for the little lame girl, started back for Aunt Phoebe’s, promising to come back to play again that afternoon, if nothing prevented.

[130]
[131]

CHAPTER XI
How the Magic Book Helped at School

THE Good Crow, Caw Caw, must have been very busy writing letters and making things that Saturday, for hardly had the children sat down to luncheon, and hardly had Henry undone his napkin than—out dropped a crow letter. Oh, oh, my! How funny!

And hardly had Jimsi lifted her napkin to take it out of the ring than lo—there, under it, was another crow letter. Oh, oh, my!

And then, as Mother took Katherine’s napkin to fasten it on there appeared a crow letter addressed to Katherine lying on the luncheon cloth.

“Did you ever!” whistled Henry. “I thought your crow was never going to write to me again, Aunt Phoebe.”

“I didn’t say that,” twinkled Aunt Phoebe’s voice. “I said you’d better look out. Beside that, Henry dear, the crow knows that you[132] and Mother and Katherine have to go back to the city tonight. You’ve got to go back to school on Monday.”

“Oh, dear,” moaned Henry. “I want to stay here.”

“Me, too,” lisped Katherine.

“Isn’t Jimsi coming home with us?” urged Henry. “She looks all right. I don’t think she looks sick any more. She doesn’t act so.”

“I feel all right,” admitted Jimsi. “I don’t need to take naps any more while I stay, Aunt Phoebe. Mother said so. I don’t want Mother and Henry and Katherine to go back because I shall miss them, but I’d just as lieve not go back to school yet. I like to be with you, Aunt Phoebe, and I do love the Good Crow’s Happy Shop and the Magic Book! My book’s really growing quite thin. I’ll soon need another—how’ll I ever do without a Magic Book when this is gone?”

“Soon Christmas will be coming,” said Mother. “You’ll come home just before Christmas, Jimsi dear. And I think Aunt Phoebe’ll come with you. After Christmas, you’ll be going back to school again, and there’ll be an end to bad medicine and the peppermints that come after it[133].”

“Hooray!” whooped Henry.

Here Are School Books With Pretty Covers Made to Keep Them Clean. These Are the Books the Children Covered, and the Book-marker, Picture Frame and Notebook Are Here too

Jimsi, however, was doubtful. She didn’t care to lose freedom that she had been having. Yet she liked school. “I’ll be glad the medicine’s gone, but I’ll want Aunt Phoebe and her crow play ever so much,” she declared. “I’m having such a good time here—and there is Joyce[134].”

“Well,” smiled Mother, “don’t borrow trouble. Today there is a whole long afternoon to play with Henry and Joyce and Katherine. And you have none of you read your crow letters yet.”

“I was keeping mine for the desert,” joked Jimsi. “Henry, you found your letter first, so you read yours first.”

Henry was deep in a slice of bread and butter, but he put it down and took up the sheet he had laid down when they had begun discussing Jimsi’s going-home. He read:

“What a good idea,” declared Mother. “I think I’ll have some books to cover when I get home, too, Henry.”

“But what are we going to do, Aunt Phoebe, my Magic Book is getting so thin? There aren’t many more pages in it—only about twenty. I counted. How’m I going to get another—and Henry wants one, too.”

“Oh, everybody who wants a Magic Book can very easily have one,” declared Aunt Phoebe. “Just go to some store where they do paper-hanging and ask if you can have an old sample book of last year’s styles in wall paper.[136] The styles change almost every year. Every year the men have new books of styles. Their shop is full of them. These old ones are useless when the new ones come in and the paperhangers are glad to get rid of the old paper books. Most always, these are thrown away. Even if you lived away off in the country, there would be some town near-by where you could get a sample-book of wall paper, if you were to ask. And if any child wants one, there are more than enough pretty Magic Books in the world to go around—more than one apiece.”

“Well, I’m going to try to get one on my way home from school Monday,” said Henry. “I pass by a paperhanger’s shop. I’ve seen the books in his window, but I never knew they could be used for play before crow told Jimsi of The Happy Shop.”

“I’ll get one there when I come home, too,” Jimsi laughed.

“Me, too!” cooed Katherine, though she only understood dimly what it was they were talking about. She had been begging Mother to read her letter aloud.

“Well, you read Katherine’s letter first, Mother dear,” urged Jimsi. “I’ll wait because[137] Katherine is so little she gets impatient. What does Katherine’s letter say?”

Then, Mother read:

Well, of course, Katherine wanted the book-marker and, of course, Henry, being the man of the family, ran to get it for Mother. It was indeed a pretty book-marker and quite easy enough for a baby like Katherine to cut. It looked like a ribbon. All one needed to do to make a book-marker like it was to cut a strip of paper and fold it and paste it together tight. Then a picture was pasted in the center[138] on one side to ornament it and the ends of the paper were snipped evenly in points. Aunt Phoebe admired crow’s handiwork, and after it had been passed all around the table, and after it had come back to Katherine again, they asked Jimsi to read her crow letter.

That, too, was voted a good idea. Henry raced to the table in The Happy Shop to see what was there and he found a pretty picture framed just like that. Oh, it really was lovely, it was!

But the crow left no more letters for anybody that lunch time, even though Aunt Phoebe made believe that she thought she ought to have one. She even got up and looked under her chair and made everybody laugh by saying in such a disappointed way, “Oh, Caw Caw must have forgotten me!” But right then and there, Jimsi remembered that she had been trusted with a crow letter to Aunt Phoebe—the one from Joyce in the little basket. She had left it by mistake in her room when she hurried down to lunch after brushing her hair.

“Please, Aunt Phoebe,” she begged. [140]“I know he didn’t forget you. May I go and look—”

Mother must have understood for she let Jimsi go to hunt. And then when she came flying back, how Mother did enjoy the joke. And Aunt Phoebe did like her basket and her letter.

As there was no more horrid nap-time now after lunch, the children ran over to spend the whole long afternoon with the little lame girl. Henry carried his books to be covered; Jimsi carried her picture to show; Katherine took the book-marker. It was a jolly party that filed home about five o’clock after all the fun. Henry had to give crow calls all the way home up the street to Aunt Phoebe’s house.

And then—Oh, dear! All too soon came train time. And Mother, Henry and Katherine were gone.

As Aunt Phoebe bent over Jimsi’s pillow that night, she whispered, “Feel under it, dearie.” And right under the pillow was—what do you think? You couldn’t guess. It was a candy kiss, and it said, “Good night, Crow.”

[141]

CHAPTER XII
The Gifts That Were Made in The Happy Shop

THE next day was Sunday. In the afternoon Jimsi ran over to see the little lame girl. They did not play with the Magic Book. The little lame girl did not feel very well. She was reading in her chair that stood in the bow-window. She was very glad to see Jimsi for, somehow, she had been feeling very lonely and wishing that she were like other children who could run about and do the many active things that were denied her.

“I’m cross today, Jimsi,” she greeted. “I’m discontented. Once in a while it just comes over me that I can’t do what other girls can. I have to stay here all day—and, Oh! I do want to run about so! I wish I weren’t lame!”

Jimsi stood beside the chair. She wished that she could think of something comforting to say. It surely was very hard to keep cheerful all the time, if one couldn’t run about and play like other children. Jimsi knew well[142] what it felt like to be sick. “But—but—you’ll get well some time,” she said.

The little lame girl sighed. “I don’t know. Not unless there’s money for me to go to the hospital and have the doctor do what ought to be done. He said I could walk, maybe, if it was done. He wasn’t sure—”

“But why can’t you go and have it done, then?” demanded Jimsi, bringing an arm over the little lame girl’s shoulder. “Surely, it’s very important that you get well. Would it cost very much money?”

“I don’t know how much,” said Joyce. “It’s more than Mother can pay. She’s trying hard to put the sewing money aside for it, but that doesn’t pay very well and it’s slow. I oughtn’t to complain and I oughtn’t to talk about it at all—I hardly ever do, but when I saw you and Henry and Katherine yesterday having such a lark, I just longed to, too.”

“Oh, there ought to be some way to make the money,” declared Jimsi. “There really ought! You ought to be well right away. I wish I could help! But girls can’t earn money doing the things that boys can. Henry can shovel snow and do carpentry and he earns money. Somehow, I never can find any way[143] to earn money. If I could, I’d put it all in a bank and give it to you to help. It mightn’t be much, but I wish I could do it.”

The little lame girl’s mouth quivered. “Maybe some time I will be well,” she said bravely. “I’m going to forget all about it and try to think of something else. That’s why I like to keep busy doing things. It keeps me from thinking about being lame. I never say anything to Mother about it. I don’t believe Miss Phoebe or anybody knows—”

“But I’m glad you told me,” Jimsi sighed sympathetically. “It helps to talk things over with a friend, I think. It always helps me to talk worries over with Aunt Phoebe. If you’d let me tell Aunt Phoebe about this, Joyce, I think she’d know exactly what to do.”

“I don’t know,” brooded the little lame girl.

“Please,” urged Jimsi. “I’m sure that Aunt Phoebe would know how to get the money. Maybe she’d just sit right down and write a story and sell it and send you right off to be all fixed up new by the doctor. Think! Why, you could come to visit me in the city then and I’d show you all my play-things. We’d ride my bicycle and take walks in the park. Oh, we’d have ever so much fun[144]!”

The little lame girl smiled. “Wouldn’t it be splendid?”

“You’ll let me tell Aunt Phoebe?”

“Why, I wouldn’t let her send me to the hospital! Mother wouldn’t let her. Mother is going to send me some day when she has the money. She’s putting it aside now, but I think it’ll be at least two years more before there’s enough—”

“Aunt Phoebe could write a story just as easy as not. She’d help in a jiffy, if you let me tell her. Then you could go right away now!”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that way,” protested Joyce. “I’d—oh, I’d never take any money like that! I’d want to earn it myself—I wish I could. I help with the sewing sometimes, but mostly, Mother uses the machine.”

“I wish I were rich—you’d have to take the money if I gave it to you! I’d make you! I wish I could make things to sell. Don’t you suppose—” Jimsi broke off suddenly. “Why couldn’t we sell some of the things we’ve found in Aunt Phoebe’s wall-paper sample book?”

“What?” inquired Joyce. “The paper dolls and the toy furniture wouldn’t sell, would they? And the valentines aren’t sellable.[145] The embroidery patterns and stencils wouldn’t—it’s the splendid fun of making something out of nothing and finding the nothing is SOMETHING that is jolly to play with. That’s why the Magic Book is so nice. It doesn’t cost a single cent and yet it is full of play that is nicer than shop-made games and toys.”

“I know,” Jimsi agreed. “And one can buy scrapbooks in shops, too. I don’t believe that the butterflies and the birds and May baskets would sell except for very little,—maybe a penny or so.”

“What else is there that we’ve made from the Magic Book?”

“Um-m-m,” mused Jimsi. “Let’s see—there’s the picture-framing, and Katherine’s book-markers, and the covers for books—oh, yes! And there are the pin-wheels, but they aren’t sellable any of them—”

“Maybe we could invent something new,” Joyce suggested. “People do, you know. Ever so many times, they make money out of very little things that seem at first too small to count for much. I’ve been thinking of some new things to make. I was going to make one for Daddy’s Christmas. Poor Daddy! He never says anything about me, but I know he[146] thinks about it ever so much. He wants me to go to the hospital, too. But he won’t let me go till we can pay for it, he says.”

“What were you going to make for Christmas?” asked Jimsi. “I thought of Christmas presents I could make with the paper from my Magic Book, too. Mine is stencil work. I was going to stencil a box of letter-paper for Aunt Phoebe and some correspondence cards for Mother. I could use the stencils—the small ones—that way.”

“That’s good,” agreed Joyce. “I thought of making blotter-pads by covering the bottom of a cardboard box with wall paper, after its rims were cut off. Then I’d take wall paper and make little corner pieces and fit them at each corner of my blotter. I’d glue the corner pieces to the cardboard that was covered with the wall paper and that would make a blotter-pad for Daddy’s desk in the other room where he works nights.”

“You’d have to line the corner pieces unless you used very heavy paper,” Jimsi added. “You’d have to make the blotter-pads stick with glue. Paste isn’t strong enough.”

“Oh, I know how I’d do it,” Joyce protested. “It’s perfectly simple. The blotter[147] could be taken out and a new one put in, you know. The corner pieces would be turned in underneath and glued to the cardboard covered with the fancy wall paper. It would be pretty. Let’s try it tomorrow.”

Some Desk Fittings That Were Made with Wall Paper

“Yes, let’s!”

“And I thought of another thing. I was going to make it for Miss Phoebe. It is a case for blotters. I’d make it by cutting a strip of flowered paper or a border pattern of[148] wall paper to fit and fold around the small blotters you buy twelve for five cents. I’d glue the ends underneath and cut the pattern out. It would make a pretty way to give a present. And, I suppose, I might stencil my blotters in water-color paint.”

“Um-hum,” nodded Jimsi reflectively. “I could make that kind of a present for my teacher at school, maybe. You wouldn’t mind, if I used your idea?”

“Of course! Why, use it,” urged Joyce. “And there’s still another thing I thought of doing. I was going to cut the outline of a leaf from green paper and tie pen-wiper things to the back. I have some cloth I could use—linen. If one had chamois, that would be better. It would be tied at the back of the leaf and cut the same shape. Three pen-wiper layers of cloth or chamois would be enough. I’d use a little red ribbon to tie all together at the stem of the leaf.”

“That’s good, too,” declared Jimsi. “I’m going to ask Aunt Phoebe tonight if she thinks we could sell some of these, if we made ever so many and took them to a shop. Maybe the shopkeepers would buy them[149].”

“I wish they would!”

“Dear me! Don’t I wish so!”

Both little girls smiled into each other’s eyes. “I’ll miss you dreadfully when I go home,” sighed Jimsi.

“And I’ll miss you!”

“Let’s think of something else we can sell.”

“Let’s see.”

They thought and thought. It seemed very hard to think of something that would sell.

“There’s a little clock made of cardboard on Father’s desk,” finally Jimsi announced. “I think you and I could copy it. Father turns the hands around. They are on a pivot and they point to numbers that are on the dial of a white clock-face. Father fixes the hour with the clock-hands. He uses it when he leaves his office. The clock tells when he will be back. Mother said she would like one once. I thought I could copy Father’s. I thought of using fancy paper pasted over a square of cardboard at the back. There would need to be an easel back so the card would stand. A strip of cardboard covered with the same sort of wall paper could be glued at the back and left loose lower down to rest the card upright.[150] The clock face would be cut out of pad paper and numbers could be cut from a calendar to paste on the dial—all around the edge. A round-sided paper-fastener would answer for a pivot to hold the clock hands in place. The hands one could cut from cardboard. They might be colored to make them stand out clearly.”

“I see,” the little lame girl answered. “I’ll make one, too. Perhaps my daddy would use one.”

“I’ll ask Aunt Phoebe if she thinks any of them will sell. I’ll ask her tonight. Perhaps we could make the two years shorter a little,” sighed Jimsi.

“Maybe we will make a fortune,” laughed Joyce. “Anyhow, Jimsi dear, I’m not going to be discontented any more. I’m not going to have any more blue days. I’m going to be plucky, I am. Don’t you ever dare to mention it again.”

“All right,” Jimsi agreed, “not unless we do make the fortune,” she laughed.

“Which we won’t,” smiled Joyce.

The twilight deepened into dusk and the firelight lit the room. “Oh, I must run,” declared Jimsi. “Aunt Phoebe told me to come[151] home before dark. Good-bye, dear. I’m going to make a fortune somehow—see if I don’t, and then you’ll go to the hospital and get well right off fast. Let’s pretend we’re going to make a fortune anyhow.”

[152]
[153]

CHAPTER XIII
The Christmas-Tree That They Made in the Happy Shop

THAT night after tea, Aunt Phoebe curled up on the lounge. “Jimsi,” she said, “I don’t feel like reading and I don’t know what to do. Come talk to me. What’s the matter, dear? You hardly said a thing all through supper. Don’t you feel well?”

“Oh, I’m all right, Aunt Phoebe,” Jimsi declared. “But I was thinking—I want to make some money dreadfully!”

“What for?” Aunt Phoebe drew Jimsi onto the couch beside her. “Is it for Christmas, Honey?” she asked.

Jimsi shook her head from side to side slowly. “Of course, I do want money for Christmas presents, but what I want it most for is to give it to somebody. I want to know if you think, Aunt Phoebe, that I could earn some money some way. Do you think that I could make things to sell if I made blotter-pads[154] and little presents and took them to a shop? Would the shopkeeper buy them to sell at Christmas, do you think?”

“I don’t believe so, Honey. You’d not make much money that way, I’m afraid.” Aunt Phoebe smiled. “It wouldn’t be a fortune, dear. Shopkeepers would not pay little girls much. The things you make are lovely, I know, but—you see, shopkeepers don’t buy that way.”

There was silence.

“What is it you want the money for?” asked Aunt Phoebe suddenly. “Maybe I could help.”

“I think you could, Aunt Phoebe. I want it to help somebody who is sick.”

“It’s the little lame girl, Joyce, isn’t it?—I didn’t know they needed money. Of course, dear, I knew they were not rich, but riches do not always mean money. I know very many poor persons who are rich because they have the things many rich persons do not have. I mean love and hope and happiness and work. Riches are not always money, Jimsi. I think you’re a rich little girl because you are so resourceful. You have such happy clever ways of making things. The crow’s magic book[155] has been very magic indeed with the things you and Joyce have made. I’ve been thinking about it all as I watched you. There’s one thing you’ve made that is splendid. It’s the motion picture play screen.”

“Crow told Joyce about it,” said Jimsi. “Yes, it’s ever so much fun. Do you think maybe we could sell that? I could make them, ever so many of them. I want the little lame girl to go to the hospital and be made well, Aunt Phoebe. She can’t go till the money is in the bank, and it may be two whole years—”

Aunt Phoebe sat upright with a jump. “You don’t mean that Joyce could get well if there was money to send her where she could have treatment, do you?”

A hot, little tear crept from Jimsi’s eye and fell on Aunt Phoebe’s hand that clasped hers in her lap.

“Why, I’ll send Joyce,” she cried. “They never told me!”

“No, no, you can’t,” declared Jimsi. “Joyce wouldn’t let you. She wouldn’t go that way, she says. She wants to help her mother earn the money. Her father can’t put much aside. They need it. That’s why I wanted to help[156].”

“Nonsense,” declared Aunt Phoebe. “They’ll have to take it from me.”

Again there was silence. Of course, Aunt Phoebe knew Jimsi was right. They would rather wait than borrow. It was too much for a gift.

Aunt Phoebe got up and walked restlessly about the room. She did that sometimes when she was writing stories, when the story stopped and wanted to go another way than the way Aunt Phoebe planned. Jimsi often laughed about this habit in fun. It did seem so odd that the story people wouldn’t do as Aunt Phoebe wanted them. Aunt Phoebe said it helped her think to walk about like that. Jimsi sat on the couch and watched her silently.

“There must be a way,” Aunt Phoebe kept saying. Then she would walk some more. Once she went right out of the room and Jimsi heard her telephoning. Then she came back and sat down in the rocking chair. “Run and bring me the shadow play that you made from the Magic Book, Jimsi,” she asked. “I want to look at it again. I know somebody who wants to see it. Jimsi, don’t get your hopes up too high—maybe the man will buy the idea[157] and put it on the market as a children’s toy. What do you say to that? If you’ll give me the toy you made, I’ll wrap it up and we’ll send it on for him to look it over. Don’t tell Joyce. I think Joyce can patent it.”

Well, if Jimsi didn’t fly! Into The Happy Shop she rushed and came back panting. The crow’s motion picture play was all there. Aunt Phoebe had paper. She did it up neatly, addressed and sealed it. Then she went to her desk and began to write a letter to send with it. She wrote for quite a while. When the letter was done, it was bed-time. Jimsi kissed her and went upstairs.

The next morning there was a storm—oh, how it did snow and blow! Aunt Phoebe declared that Jimsi couldn’t go out—no, not even as far as the little lame girl’s house. She sent her to play in The Happy Shop and promised to bring her something nice from crow, if she was good. Aunt Phoebe herself put on her cloak and hat and furs. She said she might not be home till four o’clock as there was business to do in the city even when it was stormy. She told the kitchen maid what to get for Jimsi’s lunch and Jimsi went as far as the front door to wave her off. Aunt Phoebe[158] had—why she had that package of the motion picture play of crow’s under her cloak. Jimsi saw it as Aunt Phoebe turned to wave. There was enough showing under Aunt Phoebe’s arm for Jimsi to recognize the parcel. Her heart gave a big jump; that must be the business Aunt Phoebe intended to do in the city on a stormy day.

Jimsi watched Aunt Phoebe plod through the snow and up the street out of sight. Then she turned and went toward The Happy Shop. It was going to be a very lonely day all alone. But hardly had she opened the glass door when she saw that Aunt Phoebe had put the Good Crow on the shelf today, and in his bill he held a letter.

Jimsi took the crow down and removed the letter. She tore the wee envelope open and read:

Jimsi gathered all the precious sheets of crow’s letter together and looked for the tree. It was almost hidden from sight back of some palms. It was a dear little tree. She put it upon the table of The Happy Shop and began to snip industriously with her scissors. The Magic Book was indeed thin, but there was more than enough to make all the Christmas tree decorations and the Christmas cards. Jimsi began with the chain. She made it very long and pretty, pink, blue, green, red, yellow—and again she repeated the order of colors pink, blue, green, red, yellow. The chain was very lovely when done and she hung it about the tree in long festoons.

After this she made two cornucopias that were big enough to hold candy, and some little ones beside. And she cut the flowers out and pinned them to branches, too. And she made lanterns, and a big, big star, and some[161]
[162] pendants. Crow had thoughtfully put a long roll of tinsel in the drawer of The Happy Shop table and Jimsi made loops of the tinsel to hang them on the tree. She had to sew these on with a needle threaded with fine cotton that was from Aunt Phoebe’s workbasket.

The Christmas-Tree Decorations That Were Made of Wall Paper

The tree was half trimmed at luncheon time and the little maid who worked for Aunt Phoebe didn’t put the lunch on the big, lonely dining-room table. She brought it to The Happy Shop.

Just as Jimsi was swallowing the last mouthful of apple sauce and was going to take a bite of cake, the telephone bell rang in the study. Jimsi hopped up to answer it.

“Hello!” came the voice over the telephone. “Is that you, Jimsi?”

Why, it was Aunt Phoebe’s voice! And Aunt Phoebe’s voice sounded very far away at first. It grew more clear. “Jimsi,” it said, “I can’t wait to tell you, so I called you up by long distance. The firm that makes toys wants to buy the idea of the motion picture shadow play. They will pay Joyce a whole hundred dollars for the model that she made, and give her royalty after it is published.[163] Royalty means that Joyce will get money on every toy sold. They are a big firm, and there will be more than enough money for the hospital. I’ll tell you more when I get home. Are you all right? It can be patented.”

“Oh! Oh,” gasped Jimsi. “Oh, I’m so happy! Yes, Aunt Phoebe, I am all right. Everything’s all right!”

Then the wire buzzed. Aunt Phoebe had gone.

That time, Jimsi couldn’t go back to work. She walked around just as excitedly as Aunt Phoebe did when the story wouldn’t go the way she wanted it to go. She could think of nothing but how glad Joyce would be. How she longed to put on hat and cloak and run over there. But she didn’t. She had promised Aunt Phoebe to stay indoors.

It seemed to Jimsi that the afternoon hours would never pass. She was as restless as a caged lion. She couldn’t work on Christmas-tree decorations—and then she remembered that the tree was to be finished by the time Aunt Phoebe came home. She started feverishly to make more things. She worked very hard. Indeed, she worked so hard that the tree grew to be wonderfully pretty. It needed[164] only candles to make it quite complete. Then Jimsi had an idea. “I’ll tie a crow letter on the tree,” she thought, “and the crow letter shall tell Joyce all about everything. But Aunt Phoebe must write that crow letter herself.”

She decided to try making Christmas cards and blotter-cases. She was engrossed in these when there came a stamping of feet on the doorstep outside and the front door-bell rang. It was Aunt Phoebe all covered with snow and beaming from under a snow-covered hat. Hooray!

Oh, wasn’t it good to have her back, and wasn’t it jolly to be able to find out all about the real fortune that was going to come to the little lame girl!

“It’s too good to be true,” she laughed. “Oh, tell me all about it right away, Aunt Phoebe, please!”

So Aunt Phoebe, as soon as she could fling off her very wet things, sat down by the fire and told Jimsi the whole long story of how she had taken the model and found the toy merchant who published games and toys, and how he had looked it all over and tried it and said it was good—yes, very good, and so good that it[165] did interest him. She told how he had carried the toy away to show to other members of the firm, and how she had had to wait what seemed hours and hours before he came back to say that they thought it an excellent thing and wanted to publish it.

At first, so she said, he had not wanted to pay any advance for it—that meant the hundred dollars, Aunt Phoebe said. But she had insisted, and he had agreed.

There was something Aunt Phoebe called a contract. This was going to be sent and signed by Joyce’s father. It was a written agreement of terms of sale.

“That’s all,” smiled Aunt Phoebe, finishing by giving Jimsi’s hand a hard and happy squeeze. “Now, let’s see the tree crow gave you.”

Jimsi took Aunt Phoebe to The Happy Shop where the little tree stood. Oh, it really did look very, very charming. Aunt Phoebe said so, and the little maid who came to announce dinner said so, and even Jimsi who had done it all herself said so. I think crow would have said so, too, if crow could have talked really and truly.

After dinner, Aunt Phoebe wrote the crow[166] letter that told about the hundred dollars and the contract and all the other things. She wrote it on her typewriter because she wanted it very clear and easy to understand. She told how Jimsi had wanted to have Joyce get well so that she would not be a little lame girl any longer, and she told how she herself had suddenly thought of the value of the original toy made with shadow pictures. She said she had taken it to the city and that everything was all right. It only remained to hurry Joyce right off as fast as she could go. Aunt Phoebe didn’t see why Joyce couldn’t go day after tomorrow. That was the time she and Jimsi were going to the city and they could take Joyce to the hospital in a motor car.

They tied the note to the top of the tree with a bright, red ribbon. It had to be folded and folded to fit into a crow envelope. Oh, the envelope was quite bulky and fat, I assure you.

Then they both went upstairs to bed to dream of the Good Crow who had first suggested the play of the motion picture screen. Ah, yes! It was the Good Crow who belonged to Aunt Phoebe—he had done it all.

As for the little lame girl, why, of course,[167] she went with Jimsi and Aunt Phoebe. Of course she got well! And Jimsi always declared afterward that the Good Crow was the very best crow there was, and that there never was a better real aunt than Aunt Phoebe who was a play aunt—and that if it hadn’t been for The Happy Shop and Aunt Phoebe’s Good Crow hundreds of happy children who played the shadow motion picture fun would have missed half the joy of their lives!

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