Of course, you know that films have to be pinned up to dry.
Well, the first film was pinned on the right-hand panel of the door and the second film was pinned on the left-hand panel of the door. And when it came to the third, the one that had had the little white feather dropped near it, there was nothing wooden left to pin it to—for the walls were of stone—nothing wooden except the shutters. And it was pinned across these.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Edred, “because we needn’t open the shutters till it’s dry.”
And with that he stuck in four pins at its four corners, and turned to blow out the lamp and unbolt the door. He meant to do this, but the door, as a matter of fact, wasn’t bolted at all, because Edred had forgotten to do it when he came back with the dusters, so he couldn’t have unbolted it anyway.
But he could blow out the red-sided lamp; and he did.
And then the wonderful thing happened. Of course the room ought to have been quite dark. I’m sure enough trouble had been taken to make it so. But it wasn’t. The window, the window where the shutters were—the shutters that the film was pinned on—the film on which the little white feather had fallen—the little white feather that had settled on Edred’s hair when Mrs. Honeysett was plucking that chicken at the back door—that window now showed as a broad oblong of light. And in that broad oblong was a sort of shining, a faint sparkling movement, like the movement of the light on the sheet of a cinematograph before the pictures begin to show.
“Oh!” said Elfrida, catching at Edred’s hand. What she did catch was his hair. She felt her way down his arm, and so caught what she had meant to catch, and held it fast.
“It’s more magic,” said Edred ungratefully. “I do wish——”
“Oh, hush!” said Elfrida; “look—oh, look!”
The light—broad, oblong—suddenly changed from mere light to figures, to movement. It was a living picture—rather like a cinematograph, but much more like something else. The something else that it was more like was life.