[Illustration: THE VALENTINES AND CARDS THAT WERE MADE OUT OF WALL PAPER]
“It would be splendid to do that,” agreed Joyce. “Let’s begin right away. You take your Magic Book and I’ll take mine. You can spread newspapers on the floor so we won’t make a clutter and let’s see who can make the prettiest. We’ll have a valentine exhibition afterwards and invite Miss Phoebe and the crow.”
The leaves of the magic wall paper sample books turned and turned. There were squeals of delight from Joyce and chuckles from Jimsi. “Oh, I’ve found something that will be lovely!” one would cry. “Oh, look at this!” the other exclaimed. And the little lame girl’s mother who was called to admire couldn’t tell which was the prettiest paper—you see _both_ were lovely!
First the little lame girl found some paper that had sprays of yellow roses on it. She cut out a big heart that was figured all over with them. It really was a beautiful, _beautiful_ valentine.
Jimsi suggested that if one were to color the edge all around with green crayon, _that_ would give the valentine a good finish. One could use the crayon to print on the valentine too.
Then, Jimsi improved on Joyce. She folded her paper double and cut her heart out double, making the top of her valentine heart touch the crease of the paper. Her heart opened with two sides. Inside, she wrote a verse. At the top she tied ribbon bows, using some very narrow baby ribbon that she had in the paper doll box.
Joyce made valentines like it only _she_ put pictures as well as verses inside the double heart. Some of the verses she made up. Others, she copied from old valentines that were in her scrapbook.
After they had tried all manner of heart valentines, made of plain papers, flowered papers, papers with designs, papers with figures, striped papers, cross-barred papers, they decided to try something different. Jimsi cut out a diamond-shaped figure from her paper. It was really lovely. It was a basket of daisies. The diamond was bordered with blue and Jimsi cut diamond-shaped pieces of white paper and put them at the back of the picture with a verse—the old, old verse that everybody changes. It begins:
“The rose is red, the violet blue, Sugar is sweet and so are you.”