“Me too!” echoed baby Katherine. “Me too!”
“Hush!” cried Mother. “I’ll have to ask Daddy, Jimsi dear. We’ll see what the doctor thinks of it. Maybe Aunt Phoebe’s house is the best place a little girl could grow well and strong in. Maybe you can go—but I can’t promise; we’ll see.”
All day long Jimsi went about the house wondering whether she was going to be allowed to go to Aunt Phoebe’s. She and Henry talked about it. “What do you suppose the crow’s Happy Shop is?” they asked each other.
“It’s something ever so nice if it’s the crow,” declared Jimsi. “Maybe it’s a store where the crow buys things.”
“It might be the place where he makes things,” Henry suggested. “Shops are sometimes places where things are made.”
All day long they talked about it. After the doctor had come and gone and when Daddy reached home after business, when the tea table things were cleared away and Jimsi and Henry and Mother and Daddy sat about the lamp in the living-room, they talked about the good crow and the Happy Shop some more. It was decided that day after to-morrow, Jimsi should really go to visit Aunt Phoebe and find out what a Happy Shop was!
Oh, oh, oh! Hooray! Three cheers for Aunt Phoebe and the Good Crow! Hip-hip-hoorah! Hip-hip-hoorah! Hip-hip-hoorah!
That night Jimsi was very happy. She fell asleep to dream of a big black crow who was sitting in a queer little store inside an odd house that was like the White Rabbit’s home in Alice in Wonderland. Of course Jimsi had never seen the crow face to face before but the dream seemed delightfully real and funny. She told Daddy and Mother about it in the morning, and Henry declared that dreams were never true and that, of course, Jimsi wouldn’t see the crow at Aunt Phoebe’s because the crow was all make-believe and there wasn’t any. “We just pretend there is a crow,” he said. “It’s a kind of game. The Happy Shop is prob-ab-ly—(the word is quite a long one for nine years old)—prob-ab-ly another nice new play of Aunt Phoebe’s. There won’t be any real crow there, Jimsi!”
“Oh, I know,” smiled Jimsi. “But it will be a splendid fun of some kind. I can’t wait to find out what it is. When I find out, I’ll write home all about it.”
Really everybody was as interested to know what The Happy Shop really was as Jimsi. Poor Henry had to go off to school. Daddy went to his office downtown. Only Mother and Jimsi were left to speculate upon the subject that day. It was a busy day too for Jimsi had to get ready to go to Aunt Phoebe’s for weeks and weeks while she grew strong in the country. There had to be warm things in her trunk. Some of them had to be mended. It took time. But at last the trunk was packed. (Mother and Henry and Katherine wrote crow letters for Aunt Phoebe and tucked these away inside. Jimsi volunteered to see that they reached Aunt Phoebe’s pillow—somehow.)