Page 172 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

together.

The next morning, behold! Piggie had the niftiest black cutaway jacket edged
in yellow, a curlicue tail, and a rakish black hat slanted over one pink ear.
Mrs. Royeton’s children voted him “a knockout” and when her charges saw
him they seconded the motion and were eager to make one like him. The
woman had no money but she said, “Look, children, I don’t know how we’ll
do it but we’re going to make those pigs.”

She purchased four yards of material and as much kapok as her thin purse
would allow. She got seventeen pigs out of the goods but ran out of kapok.
So she had the children bring discarded stockings which were cut up and used
to stuff the rest of them.

She added other animals, purchasing some patterns and designing others,
until there were fifty varieties. The children, more and more delighted,
brought every available scrap from home. Two Chinese girls brought two
uncalled-for sheets from their father’s laundry and after taking what material
they needed gave the rest to the others. The old striped trousers of
Antoinette’s father yielded some amazing elephants, while Kitty McCarthy’s
green chinchilla reefer became woolly dogs with green bead eyes. Over two
hundred animals were made that summer by a class that had increased from
fifteen to fifty to the wonderment of the playground director.

But here’s where the fairy tale comes in. The widow sat up nights designing
animals for the next day’s session and that’s how the lamb came into
existence. He was white muslin with black hoofs and his flat, black button
eyes made him the most innocent looking lamb that ever followed Mary.
Unknown to his originator he was chosen for a National Exhibit of
Handicraft held in Washington, D. C., where he blinked at the toy buyer of
Saks and Company’s Fifth Avenue store, New York. It was love at first sight.
The buyer demanded that lamb and more like him. In due course, Mrs.
Royeton was flabbergasted to receive a letter asking for a dozen lambs and
placing a large future order.

Daughter Eloise and the three boys fixed up a basement workshop for their