ed 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'?"

CHAPTER EIGHT.

PEGGY SHOWS HERSELF IN HER TRUE COLOURS.

The photographic fever burnt fiercely for the next few weeks. Every
spare hour was devoted to the camera, and there was not a person in the
house, from the vicar himself to the boy who