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 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 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!”

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. 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 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 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.”

“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 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.”

“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. 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 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.”