CHAPTER II.
A DISCOVERY IN FILMS.
Eunice’s exclamation was caused by the fact that when she suited the action to the word, and shut the door, they were, of course, in total darkness.
“I should say so,” returned Cricket, blankly. “Not being cats, we can’t see in ’Gyptian darkness. Do open the door. We’ll have to get a lamp.”
“No, we mustn’t,” answered Eunice, opening the door, and consulting the pamphlet. “It says, ‘neither daylight nor lamplight.’ It ought to be a red light, like this one in the picture.”
Although the children did not know it, such a lamp had come with the outfit, but when Donald unpacked the things he had left it in his own room.
“We might get a lantern from the kitchen,” went on Eunice, “and wrap it with a red cloth. That will do. Will you go for the lantern while I get the red cloth?”
Cricket flew off, and returned in two minutes with the lantern.
“Cook says,” she announced, breathlessly, “that if we put anything over it, we must be careful not to cover up the breathing-holes at the top.”
“Isn’t this fine for the cover!” said Eunice, displaying a small turkey-red laundry-bag. Its contents lay on the floor under the table.
“Now, we’re all ready,” announced Eunice once more, with much satisfaction. “What do we do first?—where’s the book?” when the lantern was carefully covered, with a due regard for the breathing-holes.
“The book? why it’s—I do believe we left it in mamma’s room. No, here it is. And—goodness gracious! Cricket, we’ve forgotten to take the roll of pictures out of the camera!”
“Aren’t we lunatics?” exclaimed Cricket, with her bubbling laugh, as she threw open the door. “How do we get the things out, anyway? Everything is so tight,” she added, turning it upside down. “I can’t see where anything comes out. Where does it come to pieces?”
“I’ll read the directions. ‘No dark room is required to take out the spool of films, but you must take your position as far from the window as possible.’ So glad we needn’t stay in this dark closet to do it! Read the directions very slowly, Cricket, and I’ll do the things.”
“All ready,” said Cricket. “‘Unclose the catch at the bottom, holding the camera taut.’ What in the world is taut?”
Eunice knit her brows.
“Can’t imagine, unless it means carefully,” she said, thoughtfully.
“Shan’t run any risks,” cried Cricket, jumping up and flying away. “I’ll look it up in the dictionary.”
She came back in a moment, looking rather disgusted.
“It only means ‘tight,’ ‘firmly.’ Why in creation didn’t they say so?”
Fortunately, the remaining directions were sufficiently simple, and in a few minutes the roll of exposures was in Eunice’s hand. The children went back into the closet, to make ready the chemicals.
The careful measuring and mixing of the powder with the required amount of water went on. The trays were arranged in due order, and Eunice announced, for the third time:
“Everything is positively ready now, so we can begin to cut apart the pictures,” taking up the roll of thick, black paper. “How can we tell where to cut them? Oh, here are little white lines on the back. Can you see to cut, Cricket?”
“Yes. What’s all this white stuff between for? It looks like paraffin paper something, only it smells like fury.”
“It’s just to keep the other paper from rubbing when it’s rolled over the spool,” said Eunice, sniffling at the paper, which, you all know, was really the film, on which the picture had been taken. “I should say it does smell. Throw it on the floor after you have cut off the black pieces.”
“Here’s one,” said Cricket. “Oh, I’m so excited, Eunice. Listen: ‘Put it in the water, edge down, to prevent air bubbles.’”
“Done,” said Eunice. “Next.”
Cricket read on under the dim red light, till she came to “In about one minute the film will begin to darken in spots.”
“There, we have not any watch,” interrupted Eunice. “Cut out and get the nursery clock, Cricket. Cover the roll all up, because you know the leastest bit of light will spoil it.”
Cricket obediently “cut out,” and then resumed her reading.
“‘The films will begin to darken in spots, representing the lights.’ Isn’t that the funniest! how can black paper darken in spots, I’d like to know?”
“Can’t imagine; but I know that chemicals make things do all sorts of queer things,” answered Eunice, lucidly. “Cut some more to be soaking while these go into the developer.”
“That first one’s been in more than a minute. Hold it up, Eunice, and let’s see it darken in spots. It hasn’t changed a bit, yet,” she added, disgustedly, after a moment. “Isn’t this waiting going to be slow work?”
The waiting did prove tiresome. Again and again the children took the thick, black squares of carbon paper from their bath in the developer, eagerly scanning the opaque substance, which naturally showed no trace of change.
Five—ten—fifteen minutes ticked slowly away.
“Goodness gracious me!” groaned Eunice at last. “I should think we had been here for five hours. Isn’t this poky?”
“This black paper can never darken,” cried Cricket, despairingly. “There’s some mistake. If it was that white lining paper there would be some sense.”
There was a moment’s pause, and then both girls exclaimed, in a breath:
“Eunice!”
“Cricket!”
“We’ve gone and—”
“Soaked the wrong thing!”
“We’ve soaked the carbon paper—”
“And thrown away the film!”
“Of course that white paraffiny-looking paper was the film!”
“Of course this thick stuff is the carbon paper to wrap around the other and keep out the light.”
“Aren’t we geeses?”
“We just are! Don’t let’s ever tell. Now, where are the films?”
“Just dropped around anywhere,” said Cricket, dolefully.
“Scrabble around carefully, and we’ll find them. Oh! aren’t we the idioticest girls?”
“We’ll have to mix some more developer, and change the water in the first tray, too. It’s all black, for the colour in that old carbon paper leaked out. Have you found all the films?”
“I had only cut six, and here they are. I’ll cover them up while you open the door and fix some more developer.”
At last, everything was under way again.
“Four o’clock,” said Eunice, soberly, “and to think that we haven’t developed a single one yet!”
“But, oh, see!” cried Cricket, joyfully, holding up the film, after a moment. “It really is beginning to darken in spots. Hooray! See, Eunice, that actually looks like an arm sticking out there! What is it, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know. Looks like a ghost’s arm, doesn’t it? Put it to soak again. Let’s look at this one.”
“Nothing here. Eunice, what makes all these scratches across it?”
“Probably we stepped on them. You know you threw them down any way. Probably the scratches won’t show through. Oh, I do believe this is mamma! Isn’t that her bonnet that begins to show?”
“Yes—no—I think it’s the one where we tried to take that runaway horse. Seems to me that looks like a leg down there.”
It was a curious effect to watch the films as they eagerly held one after another up, for the different parts came out in a ghostly, unattached way. Here one lonely-looking leg was plainly to be seen. Then a head, and again a branch of a tree or an arm.
“But look at this one,” cried Cricket, surveying one in deep disgust. “Isn’t this the smallpoxiest-looking thing?”
It was pretty liberally sprinkled with dark spots, but one of them was unmistakably Johnnie-goat’s head and horns.
“This must be the one we took on top of Johnnie-goat and the twins, shouldn’t you think? I do believe it is them—it is they—which is right?”
“I do believe it is,” answered Eunice, ignoring the grammatical appeal. “It’s spotty enough to be anything. It’s certainly like Kenneth and his cat, for I can see Johnnie-goat behind the trees.”
“So we can. Look at this one, Cricket. What we thought was mamma’s bonnet or a runaway horse isn’t either. You held it upside down. See! it’s this one where papa was getting out of his buggy. What we thought was mamma’s bonnet is papa’s foot. I guess they are ready for the last tray now. Go on with the directions.”
Long after five o’clock, two very sober and tired-looking children emerged from the bathroom closet, and proceeded to set things to rights.
“Do you know,” said Eunice, breaking a long silence as they cleared trays and wiped off the table, “the book says it only costs five cents apiece to get the things developed at a photographer’s. Don’t you really think it would be worth while to save up our money for a time and have some done? Of course we could learn to do it all right after a time, but—”
“Yes,” broke in Cricket emphatically, “I do. I don’t vote to stay in every Saturday afternoon and develop smallpoxy pictures, with smelly old chemicals and nasty, sticky films, and put my eyes out with red calico lamps. This picture of papa is the only single one that is going to be half-way decent; and the horse looks more like the ghost of a rhinoceros than anything else. That post sticks up by his nose just like a horn.”
“Cricket, don’t let’s ever tell that we soaked the carbon paper and thought it was the film that the pictures were taken on,” said Eunice, scrubbing with much soap and energy at the dull yellow stains on her hands that stubbornly grew brighter, instead of fading. “We’d never hear the last of it; and we were geeses,” she added thoughtfully.
“Indeed, I’ll never tell,” returned Cricket with emphasis. “Papa and Donald would tease us out of our boots.”
But at dinner-time there were many inquiries concerning the success of the amateur photography.
“It was a little tiresome,” confessed Eunice. “Marjorie, was the matinée good?”
“Yes, very. How many pictures did you develop?”
“Only one really good one. Papa, don’t you think you could drive us out to Kayuna next Saturday?”
“Yes, if it’s pleasant. So only one picture developed?”
“Oh, they all developed,” put in Cricket, “only we couldn’t always tell exactly what they were meant for. Marjorie, wasn’t May Chester at the matinée? I thought I saw her going.”
“But we want to know about the pictures,” persisted papa, much amused at the children’s fencing. “When will the gallery be opened? The twins said you took them with Johnnie-goat.”
“Yes, we did, and it would have been fine, only we took another picture on top of it,” said Cricket, regretfully. “We should have turned the little key around every time we took a new picture, but we didn’t, and they got a little mixed up.”
“We took some trees on top of Johnnie-goat,” broke in Eunice, “and we hoped that it would look as if he and the children were behind them. Really, I think that would be a pretty good plan, any way, if they would only develop right.”
“So they didn’t, eh?”
“Papa, you needn’t tease us. Developing pictures isn’t a bit of fun, and I’m not going to do it any more,” burst out Cricket desperately. “It isn’t right to take money from the photographers anyway, for it’s their business, and they lose so much if we do it ourselves.”
“I think so, too,” chimed in Eunice. “We staid in all this lovely Saturday, shut up in a hot, smelly closet, and wasted a lot of stuff, and got our hands all stained, and spoiled a whole lot of films.”
“But had your experience,” put in papa. “Experience is a hard school, but wise men learn in no other way. How’s that, my Lady Jane? And now about Kayuna on Saturday,” he went on, kindly changing the subject.
“Cricket, don’t ever tell about the film,” whispered Eunice as they left the table. “Don’t ever tell any one.”
And they never have told but one person, and she has never told till just now. Don’t you tell, will you?