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?