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THE GOOD CROW’S HAPPY SHOP

CHAPTER I
The Good Crow and Aunt Phoebe

ONCE a year, Aunt Phoebe came to visit in the city at Jimsi’s house. Aunt Phoebe was Mother’s best friend. Jimsi and Henry and baby Katherine had known her ever so long. They could not remember the time when they did not know Aunt Phoebe. Probably the time dated back to the age of rattles and squeaky rubber dolls when the children were so small that they knew nothing at all about Aunt Phoebe’s Good Crow, Caw Caw.

You see, Aunt Phoebe was a “play aunt.” She did not really belong to the family as everyday aunts and uncles do. She began by playing she was an aunt and almost everything that she did was either make-believe or play or something equally jolly. And Aunt Phoebe’s Good Crow Caw Caw was a play too. It was a happy make-believe that had grown up with Jimsi and Henry and Katherine.

Just how the play about the Good Crow started, nobody was ever able to tell. Even Aunt Phoebe herself could not say. But the make-believe was that Aunt Phoebe knew of a wonderfully delightful bird who was big and black and who liked nothing better than to do nice things for boys and girls.

Jimsi and Henry and Katherine knew well that all this was a lovely pretend. One might believe in it as one believed in fairies or fairy tales that one knows are not at all true—and yet fun to imagine. The Good Crow was a lovely pretend.

Everybody who knew Jimsi and Henry and Katherine, knew about Caw Caw. He appeared most frequently when the great visit of the year fell due and when the expressman had brought in Aunt Phoebe’s trunk and taken the strap off. Then Aunt Phoebe would say, “Oh, Jimsi, Caw Caw sent you a present. He sent one to Henry and Katherine too. I must get it out of my trunk! Come! Let’s see what it is!”

Then Jimsi and Henry and Katherine would laugh and begin to play the play of Caw Caw Crow that would last as long as Aunt Phoebe stayed at their home—no, longer sometimes for the Good Crow often wrote little letters to the children, just for fun.

The presents that came from Caw Caw in Aunt Phoebe’s trunk were not very big presents; they were boxes of crayons or paints or things like scissors and tools to make things. Sometimes there would be a game or a ball or a very nice toy or transfer pictures. The things that Caw Caw Crow sent the children were mostly things to do. One can always find a use for scissors or paints or crayons and things to do, you know.

Maybe, when the children were little, he had begun with giving them boxes of blocks. Now that Jimsi was eleven and Henry nine and Katherine four, Aunt Phoebe’s crow sent them interesting things—not blocks or rubber dolls. He gave them each a plasticine outfit once. Another time he sent them all painting-books. He gave them something to do with their brains and their fingers. That is the best kind of play, don’t you think so?

Well, all the time Aunt Phoebe was at the house in the city, her crow did jolly things for the children. He never really appeared. Jimsi and Henry and Katherine never saw him. He was a lovely pretend like Santa Claus. Aunt Phoebe, who knew more than anybody else did about Caw Caw, declared that he spent most of his time in the Santa Claus Land and that he flew only now and then to the home of Jimsi and Henry and Katherine when Aunt Phoebe was visiting there. He sometimes came at night when the children were sound asleep—exactly as Santa Claus comes. He flew in at the window and very, very often he left wee little letters under the children’s pillows. Maybe he left only a lollipop or a stick of peppermint candy. One never knew when one went to bed promptly and cheerfully what would be under one’s pillow! That was the fun of the play! There was mystery about it. It made fairyland a real everyday-come-true fun!

Some days, if Jimsi or Henry or Katherine had been naughty, there would be a little crow letter that would