"I'll show you all I've got," eagerly replied Ralph, and, a little later, he took the stranger home with him.
There he displayed, not only his cloud photographs, but also all the snap-shots he had made with his camera during the three years he had owned it. The magazine writer was highly delighted, for many of the pictures were exactly what he needed, and when he went away he took with him thirty photographs, for which he paid Ralph, as he said, the "regular price" of three dollars apiece.
"That's what they'd have to pay if they bought them from any of the news photo houses," he remarked, "and you might as well get the same."
To Ralph this ninety dollars was a fortune. He offered to turn the entire sum over to the League, or at least that part of it which had been paid for the cloud photographs. Ross vetoed this offer, on the ground that the League itself had not earned the money. Instead, Ralph put away some of the cash and with the rest he bought a new lens for his camera. With this lens he was able to take cloud pictures even better than his former ones.
A few weeks later, at the next Monthly Feast of the League, Ralph came proudly forward with a collection of over one hundred cloud photographs.
"I don't see, fellows," he said, "why we all couldn't have a shot at observing the clouds. I was talking to Anton the other day, and he didn't seem to know anything about the names of the clouds at all. I dug 'em up from a book I've got at home. I was thinking that it would be rather jolly if each member of the League had a set of cloud photographs for himself, with the right names of the clouds and all that sort of thing on the back. It isn't much trouble to make prints."
"I'd like to have a set, Ralph," said Ross promptly. "I hate to feel like a dub and not know about the clouds. It's like not knowing any of the stars."
"There certainly ought to be a set in the office of the Review," declared its editor-in-chief.
"I've been wondering," began Anton, "whether Mr. Levin wouldn't pick out the best ones and tell us exactly what they are. I had an awful job trying to get Ralph to bring his pictures to-day; he said he wanted to wait until he had perfect ones."
"You'll wait a long time, my boy," the Forecaster put in, "if you wait until you have a perfect set. I don't know of such a set anywhere in the world. Clayden, in England, has got some fine examples—"