Peggy looked very sad and wan after her mother’s departure, but her companions soon discovered that anything like outspoken sympathy was unwelcome. The redder her eyes, the more erect and dignified was her demeanour; if her lips trembled when she spoke, the more grandiose and formidable became her conversation, for Peggy’s love of long words and high-sounding expressions was fully recognised by this time, and caused much amusement in the family.

A few days after Mrs Saville sailed, a welcome diversion arrived in the shape of the promised camera. The Parcels Delivery van drove up to the door, and two large cases were delivered, one of which was found to contain the camera itself, the tripod and a portable dark room, while the other held such a collection of plates, printing-frames, and chemicals as delighted the eyes of the beholders. It was the gift of one who possessed not only a deep purse, but a most true and thoughtful kindness, for, when young people are concerned, two-thirds of the enjoyment of any present is derived from the possibility of being able to put it to immediate use. As it was a holiday afternoon, it was unanimously agreed to take two groups and develop them straightway.

“Professional photographers are so dilatory,” said Peggy severely; “and indeed I have noticed that amateurs are even worse. I have twice been photographed by friends, and they have solemnly promised to send me a copy within a few days. I have waited, consumed by curiosity, and, my dears, it has been months before it has arrived! Now we will make a rule to finish off our groups at once, and not keep people waiting until all the interest has died away. There’s no excuse for such dilatory behaviour!”

“There is some work to do, remember, Peggy. You can’t get a photograph by simply taking off and putting on the cap; you must have a certain amount of time and fine weather. I haven’t had much experience, but I remember thinking that photographs were jolly cheap, considering all the trouble they cost, and wondering how the fellows could do them at the price. There’s the developing, and washing, and printing, and toning,—half a dozen processes before you are finished.”

Peggy smiled in a patient, forbearing manner.

“They don’t get any less, do they, by putting them off? Procrastination will never lighten labour. Come, put the camera up for us, like a good boy, and we’ll show you how to do it.” She waved her hand towards the brown canvas bag, and the six young people immediately seized different portions of the tripod and camera, and set to work to put them together. The girls tugged and pulled at the sliding legs, which were too new and stiff to work with ease; Maxwell turned the screws which moved the bellows, and tried in vain to understand their working; Robert peered through the lenses, and Oswald alternately raved, chided, and jeered at their efforts. With so many cooks at work, it took an unconscionable time to get ready, and even when the camera was perched securely on its spidery legs, it still remained to choose the site of the picture, and to pose the victims. After much wandering about the garden, it was finally decided that the schoolroom window would be an appropriate background for a first effort; but a heated argument followed before the second question could be decided.

“I vote that we stand in couples, arm-on-arm,—like this!” said Mellicent, sidling up to her beloved brother, and gazing into his face in a sentimental manner, which had the effect of making him stride away as fast as he could walk, muttering indignant protests beneath his breath.

Then Esther came forward with her suggestion.

“I’ll hold a book as if I were reading aloud, and you can all sit round in easy, natural positions, and look as if you were listening. I think that would make a charming picture.”

“Idiotic, I call it! ‘Scene from the Goodchild family; mamma reading aloud to the little ones.’ Couldn’t possibly look easy and natural under the circumstances; should feel too miserable. Try again, my dear. You must think of something better than that.”

It was impossible to please those three fastidious boys. One suggestion after another was made, only to be waved aside with lordly contempt, until at last the girls gave up any say in the matter, and left Oswald to arrange the group in a manner highly satisfactory to himself and his two friends, however displeasing to the more artistic members of the party. Three girls in front, two boys behind, all standing stiff as pokers; with solemn faces, and hair ruffled by constant peepings beneath the black cloth. Peggy in the middle, with her eyebrows more peaked than ever, and an expression of resigned martyrdom on her small, pale face; Mellicent, large and placid, on the left; Esther on the right, scowling at nothing, and, over their shoulders, the two boys’ heads, handsome Max and frowning Robert.

“There,” cried Oswald, “that’s what I call a sensible arrangement! If you take a photograph, take a photograph, and don’t try to do a pastoral play at the same time. Keep still a moment, and I will see if it is focused all right. I can see you pulling faces, Peggy! It’s not at all becoming. Now then, I’ll put in the plate—that’s the way!—one—two—three—and I shall take you. Stea–dy?”

Instantly Mellicent burst into giggles of laughter, and threw up her hands to her face, to be roughly seized from behind and shaken into order.

“Be quiet, you silly thing! Didn’t you hear him say steady? What are you trying to do?”

“She has spoiled this plate, anyhow,” said Oswald icily. “I’ll try the other, and if she can’t keep still this time she had better run away and laugh by herself at the other end of the garden. Baby!”

“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?”

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 Number 1’ and ‘Developer Number 2’; I think the only difference is that one is rather stronger than the other. I’ll put some of the Number 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 slily; 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 manner 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?”

“Precisely—I told you so!” and Peggy bridled with an air of virtue.

“Then no wonder nothing has come out! You have drawn out the wrong shutter each time, and the plates have never been exposed. They are wasted! That’s fivepence simply thrown away, to say nothing of the chemicals!”

His air of aggrieved virtue; Peggy’s little face staring at him, aghast with horror; the thought of four plates being used and leaving not a vestige of a result, were all too funny to be resisted. Mellicent went off into irrepressible giggles; Max gave a loud “Ha, ha!” and once again a mischievous whisper sounded in Peggy’s ear—

“Good for you, Mariquita! What about the ‘conversational annotations’?”