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 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.

“Dear Jimsi:

To-day I’ve gone off to a crow convention, so I leave this letter to tell you something you will find in the Magic Book to-day. You’ll find paper doll dresses! You’ll have to hunt for them, but you’ll find them—whole wardrobes of them: blue, pink, green, red, yellow, flowered, striped. Look for them.

In the drawer of the big table there are pencils and some sheets of cardboard.

My friend Jim Crow is calling, so I must close this letter now.

I send you a crow kiss—a peck of love.

Caw Caw.

P. S.

You’ll find paper dolls enough for days and days of play, if you look in the big fashion papers that are in the magazine rack beside the couch in The Happy Shop. Cut the stylish ladies out. Mount them on the cardboard with your paste. I must fly!

Crow.”

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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. 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 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 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.”