“What under the sun can be the matter!” exclaimed Mrs. Rockwood.
Just then Mary appeared at the head of the stairs.
“Why, Mary, what is all this noise?”
“Shure, it was comin’ down mesilf Oi was to see. Saints presarve us, can there be thieves in the house, Oi do’ know!”
“Rather noisy thieves, I should think. Where is Miss Jean?”
“Out in the fields beyant, wid her bit av a camela takin’ her picter, Oi’m thinkin’. ’Twas there she said she’d be goin’ afther she came out of the pot-closet—saints have mercy! Could she git out at all, at all?” and Mary tore down the stairs, with Mrs. Rockwood and Helen close at her heels. She reached the closet, flung open the door, and beheld a spectacle. Seated on the floor, in the midst of a scattered array of pots, kettles and frying-pans, her box of plates upset, her precious camera in her lap, and blissfully unconscious that the slide was open, sat Jean, a very picture of despair.
“Mighty man! And have ye been in here all this toim, an’ not to be smothered dead!” cried Mary.
“How could I be anywhere else, I’d like to know?” said Jean, indignantly. “I called and called, but I couldn’t get you to let me out,” and, bouncing up, she scrabbled the plates back into their box, then caught up the camera to see if all was as it should be with that. As she jumped up the slide closed, and, quite unaware that it had ever been open, she announced to her nearly convulsed audience:
“Well, I’m out at last, and now I hope I can take a picture; come on, Helen,” little dreaming that the treacherous sunlight, which flashed through the hall window and straight into the pot-closet, had already printed a most perfect one on the plate.
A few moments later both she and Helen were out in the fields back of the house, and had snapped charming little scenes.