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:

“DEAR JIMSI:

To-day, I want you to do something for _me_. You see
I do quite a bit for _you_. I like to make you happy,
you know, and tell you of jolly things to play. What I
want you to do for _me_ is to tell a little lame girl
about your paper doll play and the toy furniture that
my Magic Book made.

The little lame girl cannot go out-doors as you can.
She has to stay in a wheel-chair and the hours are very
long for her. I would like to have you help her. You
can help her much better than I can because _you_ are
a little girl and I am only a play crow.

Good-bye,
_Caw Caw._

P. S.

Her name is Joyce. She lives in the third house from
the corner.”

“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 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, 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 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!”

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. “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, where one would place the picture, if one were framing one, was the glass that fitted the picture frame.

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. _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 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.

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 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 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 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 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!”

“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!

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 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_.”