"That's fine," said Doris's mother much relieved. "I should think you little girls would have a very happy time because you haven't seen each other for so long. Run along now, Doris, and be sure to come home when the big whistle blows for noon."
The two little girls skipped gayly across the yard, through the gap in the hedge between the houses and onto Mary Jane's porch.
"Let's play here," suggested Doris.
"We can't," said Mary Jane, "'cause mother says if we play out doors she don't know where we are so we must play in the nursery with all the windows open and have a good time and not bother. So let's do that.
"And anyway," she added as they climbed up the stairs, "out doors is bad for paper dolls so I'm not sorry."
They got out the five new sheets of paper dolls and the scissors and set to work cutting. Now everybody who has ever played cutout-paper dolls knows that the cutting out is the most fun. As long as there was a doll or a hat or a parasol uncut those two little girls had a beautiful time. They figured out which hats belonged to which dresses and they counted the children on the five pages so they could be divided equally. But as soon as the cutting was done, the fun was over and the girls didn't know what to do with themselves.
"I'll tell you what let's do," suggested Mary Jane suddenly, "some of these dolls have dress-up clothes like a show. Let's make a show in a box like Alice does."
What Mary Jane meant was this. Some of Alice's friends liked to plan rooms, and furnish them. And to do that they took a neat pasteboard box and stood it on its side; then they lined it with crepe paper for wall paper. Then they made furniture to match the color scheme (they were very particular about color schemes, Mary Jane remembered that) and they dressed dolls in crepe paper to match and put them in the furnished room. And, Mary Jane thought this part was the best of all, when they were tired of one room, they gave it to Mary Jane and made a new one for themselves.
It happened that only the week before, Alice and her best friend Frances had made a beautiful little room, in a box of course, all done in green and pale yellow. Later they had planned one in rose and had told Mary Jane she might have the green and yellow one. It was this box Mary Jane meant to use for the show.
"You just wait till you see," she said to Doris, "you wait till—" and she dived into her closet, climbed up on the play box inside the door and reached up to the shelf where she had put the box the girls had given her.