"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 will be quite different. There shall be nothing stiff and prim about it; the photographs will 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?"
Oswald ruffled his hair in embarrassment. To pose as an instructor in an art, when one is in doubt about its very rudiments, is a position which has its drawbacks.
"I don't—quite—know. The stupid fellow has written instructions on all the other labels, and none on these except simply 'Developer No. 1' and 'Developer No. 2;' I think the only difference is that one is rather stronger than the other. I'll put some of the No. 2 in a dish and see what happens; I believe that's the right way—in fact, I'm sure it is. You pour it over the plate and jog it about, and in two or three minutes the picture ought to begin to appear. Like this."
Five eager faces peered over his shoulders, rosy red in the light of the lamp; five pairs of lips uttered a simultaneous "oh!" of surprise; five cries of dismay followed in instant echo. It was the tragedy of a second. Even as Oswald poured the fluid over the plate, a picture flashed before their eyes, each one saw and recognised some fleeting feature; and, in the very moment of triumph, lo, darkness, as of night, a sheet of useless, blackened glass!
"What about the conversational annotations?" asked Robert slyly; but he was interrupted by a storm of indignant queries, levied at the head of the poor operator, who tried in vain to carry off his mistake with a jaunty air. Now that he came to think of it, he believed you did mix the two developers together! Just at the moment he had forgotten the proportions, but he would go outside and look it up in the book; and he beat a hasty retreat, glad to escape from the scene of his failure. It was rather a disconcerting beginning, but hope revived once more when Oswald returned, primed with information from the Photographic Manual, and Peggy's plates were taken from their case and put into the bath. This time the result was slow in coming. Five minutes went by, and no signs of a picture, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour.
"It's a good thing to develop slowly; you get the details better," said Oswald, in so professional a matter that he was instantly reinstated in public confidence; but when twenty minutes had passed, he looked perturbed, and thought he would use a little more of the hastener. The bath was strengthened and strengthened, but still no signs of a picture. The plate was put away in disgust, and the second one tried with a like result. So far as it was possible to judge, there was nothing to be developed on the plate.
"A nice photographer you are, I must say! What are you playing at now?" asked Max, in scornful impatience, and Oswald turned severely to Peggy—
"Which shutter did you draw out? The one nearest to yourself?"
"Yes, I did—of course I did!"
"You drew out the nearest to you, and the farthest away from the lens?"