Jessie Carlton

Half-finished gifts fill Jessie Carlton's work-basket at Glen Morris Cottage, in a village near New York. She begins a quilt, slippers and embroidery with enthusiasm, then turns to whatever catches her attention next. Uncle Morris gives this habit a playful name, Impulse the Wizard, and urges her to join determination with perseverance. Jessie promises to finish the presents in order, setting the terms of this children's novel about learning to follow through.

Visits from her cousins Emily and Charlie bring further tests of patience and consideration. During a gathering with her friend Carrie, Charlie's stubbornness ends in a broken china tea-set, a treasured gift from Jessie's late aunt. Family conversation and small domestic incidents carry the book's lessons about conduct. Readers interested in older children's fiction will find a close view of how ordinary play, possessions and unfinished work become occasions for moral teaching.