“Well, I wouldn’t go that way,” protested Joyce. “I’d—oh, I’d never take any money like that! I’d want to earn it myself—I wish I could. I help with the sewing sometimes, but mostly, Mother uses the machine.”
“I wish I were rich—you’d have to take the money if I gave it to you! I’d make you! I wish I could make things to sell. Don’t you suppose—” Jimsi broke off suddenly. “Why couldn’t we sell some of the things we’ve found in Aunt Phoebe’s wall-paper sample book?”
“What?” inquired Joyce. “The paper dolls and the toy furniture wouldn’t sell, would they? And the valentines aren’t sellable. The embroidery patterns and stencils wouldn’t—it’s the splendid fun of making something out of nothing and finding the nothing is SOMETHING that is jolly to play with. That’s why the Magic Book is so nice. It doesn’t cost a single cent and yet it is full of play that is nicer than shop-made games and toys.”
“I know,” Jimsi agreed. “And one can buy scrapbooks in shops, too. I don’t believe that the butterflies and the birds and May baskets would sell except for very little,—maybe a penny or so.”
“What else is there that we’ve made from the Magic Book?”
“Um-m-m,” mused Jimsi. “Let’s see—there’s the picture-framing, and Katherine’s book-markers, and the covers for books—oh, yes! And there are the pin-wheels, but they aren’t sellable any of them—”
“Maybe we could invent something new,” Joyce suggested. “People do, you know. Ever so many times, they make money out of very little things that seem at first too small to count for much. I’ve been thinking of some new things to make. I was going to make one for Daddy’s Christmas. Poor Daddy! He never says anything about me, but I know he thinks about it ever so much. He wants me to go to the hospital, too. But he won’t let me go till we can pay for it, he says.”
“What were you going to make for Christmas?” asked Jimsi. “I thought of Christmas presents I could make with the paper from my Magic Book, too. Mine is stencil work. I was going to stencil a box of letter-paper for Aunt Phoebe and some correspondence cards for Mother. I could use the stencils—the small ones—that way.”
“That’s good,” agreed Joyce. “I thought of making blotter-pads by covering the bottom of a cardboard box with wall paper, after its rims were cut off. Then I’d take wall paper and make little corner pieces and fit them at each corner of my blotter. I’d glue the corner pieces to the cardboard that was covered with the wall paper and that would make a blotter-pad for Daddy’s desk in the other room where he works nights.”
“You’d have to line the corner pieces unless you used very heavy paper,” Jimsi added. “You’d have to make the blotter-pads stick with glue. Paste isn’t strong enough.”