“Why, you never said ‘Now’!”
“And I’m not going to. I wasn’t likely to let you all look like statues.”
“We’ve been ‘took’ unawares!” cried Austin, dancing wildly round Max and the basket.
“Florry’s a base deceiver!” said Frances, chuckling over the little ruse. “Now we’ll pack our traps and learn our fate in the dark-room.”
Subsequent proceedings in the ammonia-perfumed apartment need not be here described, but I give the result.
Austin’s developed plate revealed the distressing fact that a trifling twist of the camera had caused the disappearance of the half-group of poplars. There remained to him the gate, with a tin-soldier row of diminutive figures in front of it—their backs to the fading light, and their faces consequently indistinguishable as to eyes and all other features; a long stretch of hedge, running aimlessly across the picture to the right as though seeking a lost vanishing-point; a foreground more mixed than the most ardent impressionist could have believed possible; and a dark expanse of nothing where the mist and clouds ought to have been.
Max had three portraits of Austin. That is to say, his figure faithfully represented Austin at three different moments, as the model had oscillated on his slippery perch.
Betty’s desire for size had given her two gigantic heads, which acknowledged her leisurely exposure by deliberately fading away before her anxious eyes, leaving her with a coal-black plate and a disappointed soul.
Frances’s lights were a little hard and her shadows a little heavy; but Woodend village loomed with no more than artistic vagueness on her plate, and her short exposure had preserved her mist and clouds. And Max’s far-off figure was quite life-like. Frances hoped that her negative would, after all, yield a decent print, and Austin was consoled by the thought that Woodend village had been photographed at last.
There was no light in the dark-room save that which came from Austin’s ruby lamp, and a flickering reflection through the red-paned window of the waning day without. Frances developed Florry’s plate with friendly care, and announced results to the group peering over her shoulders.