“Plenty.”
“All right then; and will you carry up a bucket of fresh clear water, while Nan helps me to get my bottles and trays together?”
Harry's faith began to revive. “Rex does seem to know what he's about, after all,” he thought.
Coats and hats were punched on to their respective pegs, rather than hung up according to rule, and in a few moments Harry, with the bucket of water, and Rex and Nan, with their mysterious vials and bottles, met in the dark closet. Rex lit his ruby lantern, and then solemnly closed the door. Poor little Millie would undoubtedly have been frightened to death had she been compelled to be present at this gloomy stage of proceedings.
Harry and Nan sat on the floor, with their legs crossed under them, tailor-fashion, and with their heads pushed very forward so as not to miss anything. Regie sat opposite them, pouring liquids out of bottles, measuring them in little glasses, adding water to them, and emptying them again into certain square trays, or dishes, in front of him, “Now we're ready to begin,” he said at last, with the air of a little lecturer; “and the first thing to be done is to take the plate out of the holder. This is the one on which I took the first picture; but you see it looks perfectly white, as though there were no picture at all.”
“And is there?” asked Nan, incredulously.
“Of course there is, and you'll see it with your own eyes in a minute. First, I have to dust it with this camel's hair brush, for the smallest speck would make a little pin hole in the plate; and now watch! I put it in this tray; the stuff in here is called the developer, because in a few moments it will begin to bring the picture out.”
This was always a moment of supreme excitement for Regie. You could have heard him panting away through the crack of the closed door. The excitement was contagious, and Nan began to pant too. Only Harry continued to breathe quite regularly.
“There it comes, there it comes!” Regie cried exultingly. “There's the boat, see! and there you are, Nan, and there! the Croxsons are coming out;” this in a regretful sort of tone, as though he half repented having included such a disagreeable crowd in the picture at all.
Mute with wonder, Harry and Nan looked on. To accomplish such a result in such a mysterious way raised Regie in their eyes to the level of an actual magician. Yes, there was the whole picture before them. They could distinguish it quite distinctly, even by the dim lantern light, only everything was reversed; faces were black and coats were white.