y
about it that such packages usually have.

"What do you suppose it is, Paul?" Hilary cried. "Why, I've never had
anything come unexpectedly, like this, before."

"A whole lot of things are happening to us that never've happened
before," Patience said. "See, it's from Uncle Paul!" she pointed to
the address at the upper left-hand corner of the package. "Oh, Hilary,
let me open it, please, I'll go get the tack hammer."

"Tell mother to come," Hilary said.

"Maybe it's books, Paul!" she added, as Patience scampered off.

Pauline lifted the box. "It doesn't seem quite heavy enough for books."

"But what else could it be?"

Pauline laughed. "It isn't another Bedelia, at all events. It could
be almost anything. Hilary, I believe Uncle Paul is really glad I
wrote to him."

"Well, I'm not exactly sorry," Hilary declared.

"Mother can't come yet," Patience explained, reappearing. "She says
not to wait. It's that tiresome Mrs. Dane; she just seems to know when
we don't want her, and then to come--only, I suppose if she waited 'til
we did want to see her, she'd never get here."

"Mother didn't say that. Impatience, and you'd better not let her hear
you saying it," Pauline warned.

But Patience was busy with the tack hammer. "You can take the inside
covers off," she said to Hilary.

"Thanks, awfully," Hilary murmured.

"It'll be my turn next, won't it?" Patience dropped the tack hammer,
and wrenched off the cover of the box--"Go ahead, Hilary! Oh, how slow
you are!"

For Hilary was going about her share of the unpacking in the most
leisurely way. "I want to guess first," she said. "Such a lot of
wrappings! It must be something breakable."

"A picture, maybe," Pauline suggested. Patience dropped cross-legged
on the floor. "Then I don't think Uncle Paul's such a very sensible
sort of person," she said.

"No, not pictures!" Hilary lifted something from within the box, "but
something to get pictures with. See, Paul!"

"A camera! Oh, Hilary!"

"And not a little tiny one." Patience leaned over to examine the box.
"It's a three and a quarter by four and a quarter. We can have fun
now, can't we?" Patience believed firmly in the cooperative principle.

"Tom'll show you how to use it," Pauline said. "He fixed up a dark
room last fall, you know, for himself."

"And here are all the doings." Patience came to investigate the
further contents of the express package. "Films and those funny lit