“Why—just like embroidery patterns,” said Jimsi. “My teacher at school taught us how to use them. We decorated lots of things like linen hand-bags, pillows and little fancy Christmas gift things. But we used oil paints. With water-color, one can stencil packages of blotters and tie them together for a gift. One can stencil paper picture-frames or letter-paper, I should think—oh, most everything.”
“The design you have there’s too big for letter paper,” Joyce objected. “Where can one find a small enough stencil for that?”
“Why, take the tulip right in the center!” laughed Jimsi.
Of course! Oh, what fun!
They tried it with some sheets of the little lame girl’s letter-paper and it was ever so pretty! And it really took no time to paint it. Hooray!
“Let’s write the crow a letter with a stencil at the top,” suggested Jimsi.
“And put your pattern in,” went on Joyce. “The one you were going to give your Aunt Phoebe.”
“Let’s write a round-robin letter: you write one sentence and then I’ll write the next!”
So they began:
“Dear Good Crow: