"Thank you, Caleb; but if you're right, I'm afraid I'm doomed to see snakes frequently for the remainder of my natural life."
"Speakin' o' snakes as a means o' grace," said Caleb, "p'r'aps 'twould int'rest you to know that some awful drunkards in this county was converted by snakes. Yes'm; snakes in their boots scared them drunkards into the kingdom."
"In—their—boots?" murmured Grace, with a wild stare. "How utterly dreadful! I didn't suppose that the crawling things—"
"Your education in idioms hasn't been completed, my dear," said Philip. "'Snakes in their boots' is Westernese for delirium tremens."
"Oh, Caleb! How could you? But do tell me how photography is to be a means of grace."
"I'll do it—as soon as I can find out. I'm askin' the question myself, just now, an' I reckon I'll find the answer before I stop tryin'. There don't seem to be anythin' about your camera that'll spile, an' I've read that book o' instructions through an' through, till I've got it 'most by heart. Would you mind lettin' me try to make a pictur' or two some day?"
"Not in the least. You're welcome to the camera and outfit at almost any time."
Meanwhile Grace continued to "have lots of fun" with the camera. She resolved to have a portrait collection of all the babies in the town; and as she promised prints to the mothers of the subjects, she had no difficulty in obtaining "sittings." To the great delight of the mothers, the pictures were usually far prettier than the babies, for Grace smiled and gesticulated and chirruped at the infants until she cajoled some expression into little faces usually blank. Incidentally she got some mother pictures that impressed her deeply and made her serious and thoughtful for hours at a time.
Her greatest success, however, according to the verdict of the people, was a print with which she dashed into the store one day, exclaiming to her husband and Caleb:—