“Well, I think what I said has come true,” said Miss Jule, leading the general laugh in which Anne’s mother joined rather feebly, on account of the destruction of the pansies. “Happy seems to have chosen the nearest approach to an oven that she could find. See, Anne, there is one underneath all the others, the pup with the dark ear, and that poor thing always seems to be underneath. What is her name?”
“We haven’t named them yet, but we are going to to-morrow, because it will be their three weeks old birthday. Oh, do look quick at that one with the black and tan head, she is really scratching her ear with her hind paw, the darling!”
All this time Waddles was acting in a most strange manner. He had sometimes played with Jack and Jill, always came when they cried or seemed in trouble, and literally mounted guard over the nursery kennel, from out of his fastness under the cellar door. But now the sight of the sixlets seemed to fill him with terror, and he would not walk around that side of the house while they were in sight, though he continued to be very polite to Happy, and allow her to rob his food dish at her sweet will. He acted very much as a man might when his spouse is too busy with a large family to give him any attention—he went off with his men friends, Mr. Wolf, Quick, Tip, and Colin, and hunted sometimes until early morning, much to Anne’s disgust and the spoiling of his well-kept appearance; for Waddles had always been a dandy in his bachelor days.
These were busy times for Anne’s camera; but, as her father told her, she was beginning with almost the most difficult things that can be photographed—living animals, which must be caught by snap-shots. And in order to succeed with these, one must have skill as well as experience to know what it is possible to take and what never can be caught at all.
Anne had succeeded in making a very good portrait of her mother sitting under the trees reading, also one of Waddles guarding his meat-dish; though she wasted enough developer upon them to have served a dozen plates. Thus encouraged, she began to snap wildly at the puppies, getting some very laughable results, and learning that if she was not going to spend her whole year’s pocket money in a single week, she must take better aim before she fired.
One plate had only two pairs of back legs on it, another a grotesque head of Happy, who had been facing the camera at such close range that she was all head and her body dwindled away to nothing. Another one, of the puppies gathered around their dish learning to drink, was a hazy mass of wagging tails, and so on; but the oddest picture of all was of Mr. Hugh bowing to Miss Letty as they met him on the road. Why it was no one could tell, but it made him look so like a jumping-jack that no one could look at it without laughing; that is, no one but Mr. Hugh, who flushed up and said that Anne had been cheated in the lens.
“No, it’s a good eye; father says so,” put in matter-of-fact Tommy, who usually championed Anne and her possessions. “It just saw you that way and put it down.”
“If other people see me that way, I don’t wonder that they always make fun of me, and don’t like me,” said Mr. Hugh, looking unthinkingly toward where Miss Letty was playing tennis with Anne and a good-looking college fellow named Varley who was a chum of Pinkie Scott’s big brother; for Mr. Hugh was too practical and slow to take a joke quickly, which was the one defect that kept him from being altogether charming.
“I don’t think looks matters much. If you just like things, you see ’em all right. I loved Lily dog, but she was really ever so homely, Anne says, lots worse than your picture, and I kept Miss Letty for my sweetheart all that week the poison ivy made her eyes little and buried her nose,” he added, swelling with boastful pride at his fidelity. Thus did Tommy manage to alternately warm and chill the friendship between his two friends.