Here Elizabeth came dashing back to announce to the family that there was an insuperable obstacle. If she went into the simplest kind of photography she would have a new camera--and oh, quite a lot of things.
"A camera is easy," said Mrs. Spooner, "since you've all agreed to give me the keeping of the hundred dollars, I intend to put it in the bank as a reserve fund to draw on in case of an emergency. I'll consider this case of yours as one, and buy you a camera with some of it."
"And I'll fix up a dark-room all right, Elizabeth," promised Roy, who was always intensely interested in all the Spooners' affairs. "I can do it easily; just board up an end of the back porch, fix a red lantern in it for a light, with some shelves and a sink, same as the kitchen. I can make it. It won't cost much, and you can do your own developing. Say, Elizabeth, that's easy!"
So it came about that, after some persuasion, Elizabeth finally accepted the camera--a small one, with chemicals, films and everything necessary for a start, all of them to be paid for out of the hundred dollars in the bank. Roy fixed up the darkroom with all the needed apparatus, and, thus equipped, Elizabeth declared herself ready for business, and let the public know it by adding to the sign down at the road gate another line, in smaller letters, which read:
"Photographs made to order.
Horseback pictures and views of places a
specialty."
Ruth still kept up her baking in a small way. She no longer undertook such strenuous jobs as baking for ranches or festivals, but people passing by usually dropped in for a bag of doughnuts or a pie, knowing that they were always kept on hand. Some of these customers patronized Elizabeth's "studio," as she named the little boarded-up corner of the porch, and had their pictures taken. More often she was asked to go and make a card-picture of somebody's home, or she tried snap-shots of cattle handling which sold well to the boys who could identify themselves or their friends in a chance group.
Elizabeth made her charges in accordance with her work, which, being an amateur, could not command professional rates. She studied hard her manual of photography, and finally after considerable debate, took a correspondence course in the art. Still, living on a ranch, she could barely make enough to pay for her materials, and indeed was doing well to accomplish this much.
"When I get so I can earn, and have enough money to buy a bigger camera, I might try a place in town, or maybe I'll put up my prices," she said. But she resisted all suggestions that a finer camera be purchased from the reserve fund. "If anything happens we'll need that to live on," was her wise conclusion.
Let nobody think that there were not days of discouragement, when Elizabeth spoiled her films or the simple drudgery of the work weighed on her. Nothing worth having is got without effort. Whatever this girl's ancestry, she had inherited pluck and persistance, and after a failure she always went back to work with renewed energy.
"I will do it!" she would say to Ruth and Roy. "I am going to try to make myself the very best photographer I can,--and then maybe the next higher profession will come along and invite me in."