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_!”

“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. I felt as if I’d love to do something for the children there. It’s so—so very unhomelike!”

“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!”

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.

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:

“The rose is red, the violet blue,
Sugar is sweet and so are you.”

Jimsi changed it to:

“The basket’s blue—the daisies white,
I love you, dear, with all my might.”

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, 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 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!

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:

“DEAR FRIENDS OF THE MAGIC BOOK AND THE HAPPY SHOP:

Picnics don’t come in winter usually but I am sending
you an in-door picnic to-day. If you open the big
basket you’ll find that there are some nice picnic-y
things inside. This is so that Jimsi can stay with
Joyce a little longer, and also so Joyce can have Jimsi
a little longer.

Good-bye,
_Crow._

P. S.

In the little bottle is Jimsi’s bad medicine. She
doesn’t like to take it but Joyce will please see her
swallow it after the picnic is over. Please ask Jimsi
to bring the picnic basket home to The Happy Shop with
her when it is nap-time.

_C. C._”

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!”