FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   >>   >|  
"Mr. Machin," said Rose Euclid, "I do believe your eyes were shut!" "So do I!" Edward Henry curtly agreed. "But you'll spoil the group!" "Not a bit of it!" said Edward Henry. "I always shut my eyes when I'm being photographed by flash-light. I open my mouth instead. So long as something's open, what does it matter?" The truth was that only in the nick of time had he, by a happy miracle of ingenuity, invented a way of ruining the photograph. The absolute necessity for its ruin had presented itself to him rather late in the proceedings, when the photographer had already finished arranging the hands and shoulders of everybody in an artistic pattern. The photograph had to be spoilt for the imperative reason that his mother, though she never read a newspaper, did as a fact look at a picture-newspaper, _The Daily Film_, which from pride she insisted on paying for out of her own purse, at the rate of one halfpenny a day. Now _The Daily Film_ specialized in theatrical photographs, on which it said it spent large sums of money: and Edward Henry in a vision had seen the historic group in a future issue of the _Film_. He had also, in the same vision, seen his mother conning the said issue, and the sardonic curve of her lips as she recognized her son therein, and he had even heard her dry, cynical, contemptuous exclamation: "Bless us!" He could never have looked squarely in his mother's face again if that group had appeared in her chosen organ! Her silent and grim scorn would have crushed his self-conceit to a miserable, hopeless pulp. Hence his resolve to render the photograph impossible. "Perhaps I'd better take another one?" the photographer suggested, "though I think Mr.--er--Machin was all right." At the supreme crisis the man had been too busy with his fireworks to keep a watch on every separate eye and mouth of the assemblage. "Of course I was all right!" said Edward Henry, almost with brutality. "Please take that thing away, as quickly as you can. We have business to attend to." "Yes, sir," agreed the photographer, no longer victorious. Edward Henry rang his bell, and two gentlemen-in-waiting arrived. "Clear this table immediately!" The tone of the command startled everybody except the gentlemen-in-waiting and Mr. Seven Sachs. Rose Euclid gave vent to her nervous giggle. The poet and Mr. Marrier tried to appear detached and dignified, and succeeded in appearing guiltily confused--for which they con
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Edward
 

photograph

 

photographer

 

mother

 

newspaper

 
waiting
 
gentlemen
 

Euclid

 
vision
 

Machin


agreed

 

crisis

 
supreme
 

silent

 
appeared
 

chosen

 
squarely
 
render
 

impossible

 

conceit


Perhaps

 

miserable

 

hopeless

 

fireworks

 

resolve

 

suggested

 

crushed

 

nervous

 

startled

 

immediately


command

 
giggle
 

guiltily

 

appearing

 

confused

 
succeeded
 

dignified

 
Marrier
 

detached

 
arrived

brutality
 

Please

 
separate
 
assemblage
 

quickly

 

victorious

 
longer
 

looked

 
business
 

attend