“Dolls,” promptly sang out Jimsi. “I love to play dolls. But it isn’t much fun to play dolls all alone and I left mine at home. I was afraid that my best doll would get hurt in packing and I didn’t want to break her—beside that, I thought you’d probably have The Happy Shop play to keep me busy.”
“Yes, you’re right, Jimsi! And it will keep you busy too!” smiled Aunt Phoebe. “Do you know, it was just luck that made me run across the Magic Book. You see I had the little room where you are repapered in blue. I’m so glad I did! And the paper hanger brought this sample book with him when he came. When I saw it and after I chose the blue paper in your room, I asked if I could buy it. He shook his head. ‘It’s just a sample book,’ he said, ‘We have ever so many of them. The dealers give them to us and we throw them away after we have no more use for them. The patterns are new every year and the fresh sample books come in in January. This happens to be a book of last year and if you want it, you are more than welcome to it, if it is of any use to you.’”
“Why, think of it!” Jimsi beamed, squeezing Aunt Phoebe’s hand. “Did you tell him?”
“Oh, I told him that I’d like to have the book very much and that I thought there were ever so many children who would like his old sample books of wall paper,” returned Aunt Phoebe. “He just gives them away. Paper-hangers, it seems, always throw them out or sell them to the junkmen and they never give them to children because, Jimsi dear, the children don’t know anything at all about them. Nobody but the Good Crow and I know about Magic that is in old sample books of wall paper! But, Jimsi, it’s time for bed and you know we both made Mother a promise. Kiss me good-night, dear. Here’s the candle. I’ll come up for a hug later as Mother does.”
And then Jimsi went up to the little blue room with her candle. She turned down the covers and slipped her hand under the pillow but the crow had not put any other letter there. Not again _that_ day!
THE sun woke Jimsi in the morning. It was peeping into the little blue room from between the evergreen trees outside. For a moment, Jimsi wondered where she was and then she remembered, of course! She hopped into her red woolly wrapper and slipped on the slippers that had Peter Rabbit’s picture on their toes. The door was open into Aunt Phoebe’s room and in she ran to say good-morning. “I just can’t wait to see The Happy Shop, Auntie,” she chirped. “Please, might I go and look at it right away now!