the heavy things, dear, and stand to me for your back
hair. I think I could make a really good effect with your back hair."
Peggy put her head on one side and stared at the flaxen mane in
speculative fashion. "A long muslin gown--a wreath of flowers--a bunch
of lilies in your hands! If you weren't so fat, you would do
splendiforously for Ophelia. I might manage it, perhaps, if I took you
from the back, with your head turned over your shoulder, so as to show
only the profile. Like that! Don't move now, but let me see how you
look." She took Mellicent's head between her hands as she spoke, wagged
it to and fro, as if it belonged to a marionette, and then gave a
frog-like leap to a farther corner of the bed to study the effect. "A
little more to the right. Chin higher! Look at the ceiling. Yes-es--I
can do it. I see how it can be done."

It turned out, indeed, that Peggy had a genius for designing and posing
pretty, graceful pictures. With a few yards of muslin and a basket, or
such odds and ends of rubbish as horrified Esther's tidy soul to behold,
she achieved marvels in the way of fancy costumes, and transformed the
placid Mellicent into a dozen different characters: Ophelia, crowned
with flowers; Marguerite, pulling the petals of a daisy; Hebe, bearing a
basket of fruit on her head, and many other fanciful impersonations,
were improvised and taken before the week was over. She went about the
work in her usual eager, engrossed, happy-go-lucky fashion, sticking
pins by the dozen into Mellicent's flesh in the ardour of arrangement,
and often making a really charming picture, only to spoil it at the last
moment by a careless movement, which altered the position of the camera,
and so omitted such important details as the head of the sitter, or left
her squeezed into one corner of the picture, like a sparrow on the
house-top.

Out of a dozen photographs, three, however, were really remarkable
successes; as pretty pictures as one could wish to see, and, moreover,
exceedingly good likenesses of the bonnie little subject. Esther's part
of the work was performed with her usual conscientious care; and when
the last prints were mounted, the partners gazed at them with rapture
and pride. They were exhibited at the dinner-table the same evening
amid a scene of riotous excitement. The vicar glowed with pleasure;
Mrs Asplin called out, "Oh, my baby! Bless her heart!" and whisked
away two tears of motherly pride. Os