"There!" I said, handing it to her.
"Have you any more, paper you can spare?" she questioned.
"Of course," I said. "Should you like me to make you more boats?"
"I'll make some things for you" she remarked, "if you will let me have the paper."
I offered her the freedom of the writing-paper drawer; and, while I looked on, she folded and refolded with a practiced hand, until the table beside us was covered, not only with boats compared with which mine was as a dory to an ocean liner, but also with a score of other pretty and somewhat intricate paper toys.
"Who taught you to make all these lovely things?" I asked.
"My teacher," answered the small girl. "We all do it, in my room at school, every Friday."
They do so many things! Their grown-up friends are hard put to it to find anything novel to do with, or for, them. Not long ago a little boy friend of mine was ill with scarlet fever. His "case" was so light that the main problem attached to it was that of providing occupation for the child during the six weeks of quarantine in one room. Remembering the pleasure I had taken as a child in planting seeds on cotton in a glass of water and watching them grow at a rate almost equal to that of Jack's beanstalk, I made a similar "little garden" and sent it to the small boy.
"It was lots of fun, having it," he said, when, quite well, he came to see me. "It grew so fast—faster than the others."
"What others?" I queried.