“Not a ba—” began Mellicent indignantly; but she was immediately punched into order, and stood with her mouth wide open, waiting to finish her protest so soon as the ordeal was over.
Peggy forestalled her, however, with an eager plea to be allowed to take the third picture herself.
“I want to have one of Oswald to send to mother, for we are not complete without him, and I know it would please her to think I had taken it myself,” she urged; and permission was readily granted, as everyone felt that she had a special claim in the matter. Oswald therefore put in new plates, gave instructions as to how the shutters were to be worked, and retired to take up an elegant position in the centre of the group.
“Are you read-ee?” cried Peggy, in professional sing-song; then she put her head on one side and stared at the group with twinkling eyes. “Hee, hee! How silly you look! Everyone has a new expression for the occasion! Your own mothers would not recognise you! That’s better. Keep that smile going for another moment, and—how long must I keep off the cap, did you say?”
Oswald hesitated.
“Well, it varies. You have to use your own judgment. It depends upon—lots of things! You might try one second for the first, and two for the next, then one of them is bound to be right.”
“And one a failure! If I were going to depend on my judgment, I’d have a better one than that!” cried Peggy scornfully. “Ready! A little more cheerful, if you please—Christmas is coming! That’s one. Be so good as to remain in your positions, ladies and gentlemen, and I’ll try another.” The second shutter was pulled out, the cap removed, and the group broke up with sighs of relief, exhausted with the strain of cultivating company smiles for a whole two minutes on end. Max stayed to help the girls to fold up the camera, while Oswald darted into the house to prepare the dark room for the development of the plates.
When he came out, ten minutes later on, it was a pleasant surprise to discover Miss Mellicent holding a plate in her hand and taking sly peeps inside the shutter, just “to see how it looked.” He stormed and raved, while Mellicent looked like a martyr, wished to know how a teeny little light like that could possibly hurt anything, and seemed incapable of understanding that if one flash of sunlight could make a picture, it could also destroy it with equal swiftness. Oswald was forced to comfort himself with the reflection that there were still three plates uninjured; and, when all was ready, the six operators squeezed themselves in the dark room, to watch the process of development, indulging the while in the most flowery expectations.
“If it is very good, let me send it to an illustrated paper. Oh, do!” said Mellicent, with a gush. “I have often seen groups of people in them. ‘The thing-a-me-bob touring company,’ and stupid old cricketers, and things like that. We should be far more interesting.”
“It will make a nice present for mother, enlarged and mounted,” said Peggy thoughtfully. “I shall keep an album of my own, and mount every single picture we take. If there are any failures, I shall put them in too, for they will make it all the more amusing. Photograph albums are horribly uninteresting as a rule, but mine shall be quite different. There shall be nothing stiff and prim about it; the photographs shall be dotted about in all sorts of positions, and underneath each I shall put in—ah—conversational annotations.” Her tongue lingered over the words with triumphant enjoyment. “Conversational annotations, describing the circumstances under which it was taken, and anything about it which is worth remembering... What are you going to do with those bottles?”