"So am I," chimed in Jasper. "Dear me, how I wanted to get a chance to sketch some of those magnificent curves and rapids and falls in the Visp River coming up."
"Oh, that dear, delicious Visp River!" echoed Polly, while Adela began to bemoan that it was the best thing they had seen, and the car whizzed them by so fast, she couldn't do a thing—O dear!
"I got some snap-shots, but I don't believe they are good for anything," said Jasper, "just from the pure perversity of the thing."
"Take my advice," said Tom, lazily leaning forward, "and don't bother with a camera anyway."
"As if you expected any one to take up with such a piece of advice," ejaculated Jasper, in high disdain. "Say something better than that, Tom, if you want to be heard."
"Oh, I don't expect to be heard, or listened to in the slightest," he said calmly. "Anybody who will trot round with a kodak hanging to his neck by a villanous strap—can't be—"
"Who's got a villanous strap hanging to his neck?" cried Jasper, while the rest shouted as he picked at the fern-box thus hanging to Tom.
"Oh, that's quite a different thing," declared Tom, his face growing red.
"I know; one is a kodak, and the other is a fern-box," said Jasper, nodding. "I acknowledge they are different," and they all burst out laughing again.
"Well, at least," said Tom, joining in the laugh, "you must acknowledge, too, that I go off by myself and pick up my wild flowers and green things, and I'm not bothering round focussing every living thing and pointing my little machine at every freak in nature that I see."