But in the photographer’s dressing-room, Aunt Elizabeth grimly proceeded to brush back her bang and pin it with hairpins.
“Oh, please, Aunt Elizabeth, let me have it down,” Emily begged. “Just for the picture. After this I’ll brush it back.”
Aunt Elizabeth was inexorable. The bang was brushed back and the photograph taken. When Aunt Elizabeth saw the finished result she was satisfied.
“She looks sulky; but she is neat; and there is a resemblance to the Murrays I never noticed before,” she told Aunt Laura. “That will please Aunt Nancy. She is very clannish under all her oddness.”
Emily would have liked to throw every one of the photographs in the fire. She hated them. They made her look hideous. Her face seemed to be all forehead. If they sent Aunt Nancy that Aunt Nancy would think her stupider than ever. When Aunt Elizabeth did the photograph up in cardboard and told Emily to take it to the office Emily already knew what she meant to do. She went straight to the garret and took out of her box the water-colour Teddy had made of her. It was just the same size as the photograph. Emily removed the latter from its wrappings, spurning it aside with her foot.
“That isn’t me,” she said. “I looked sulky because I felt sulky about the bang. But I hardly ever look sulky, so it isn’t fair.”
She wrapped Teddy’s sketch up in the cardboard and then sat down and wrote a letter.
“Aunt Elizabeth had my picture taken to send you but I don’t like it because it makes me look too ugly and I am putting another picture in instead. An artist friend made it for me. It is just like me when I’m smiling and have a bang. I am only lending it to you, not giving it, because I valew it very highly.
“Your obedient grand niece,