_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 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 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 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 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:
“DEAR JOYCE:
Maybe you’d like this basket of flowers. I made the
basket part with my book of magic paper just to send
these flowers to you.
Your loving
_Crow Caw Caw._”
“I’ll tell you what,” Joyce suggested. “Let’s each take some paper—the
very heavy wall 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 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.
[Illustration: 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 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 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.