“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.
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.