The House of Arden, E. Nesbit [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

films; I’m not at all sure about those films. You see, we took the films with us, and of course we’ve brought them back, but the picture that’s on the films⁠—we didn’t take that with us. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if the films are all blank.”

“It’s very, very clever of you to think of it,” said Elfrida respectfully; “but I do hope it’s a perfectly silly idea of yours. Let’s ask Mrs. Honeysett if we may use the old room she said used to be the still-room to develop them in. It’ll be a ripping darkroom when the shutters are up.”

“Course you may,” said Mrs. Honeysett. “Yes; an’ I’ll carry you in a couple of pails of water. The floor’s stone; so it won’t matter if you do slop a bit. You pump, my lord, and I’ll hold the pails.”

“Why was that part of the house let to go all dirty and cobwebby?” asked Elfrida, when the hoarse voice of the pump had ceased to be heard.

“It’s always been so,” said Mrs. Honeysett. “I couldn’t take upon me to clear up without Miss Edith’s orders. Not but what my fingers itch to be at it with a broom and a scrubbing brush.”

“But why?” Elfrida persisted.

“Oh, it’s one of them old, ancient tales,” said Mrs. Honeysett. “Old Beale could tell you, if anyone could.”

“We’ll go down to old Beale’s,” said Edred decidedly, “as soon as we’ve developed our pictures of the castle⁠—if there are any pictures,” he added.

“You never can tell with them photo-machines, can you?” said Mrs. Honeysett sympathetically. “My husband’s cousin’s wife was took, with all her family, by her own back door, and when they come to wash out the picture it turned out they’d took the next door people’s water-butt by mistake, owing to their billy-goat jogging the young man’s elbow that had got the camera. And it wasn’t a bit like any of them.”

XI Developments

“Come on,” said Edred, “you measure out the hypo and put the four pie-dishes ready. I’ll get the water.”

He got it, with Mrs. Honeysett’s help⁠—two brimming pails full.

“You mustn’t come in for anything, will you, Mrs. Honeysett?” he earnestly urged. “You see, if the door’s open ever so little, all the photographs will be done for.”

“Law, love a duck!” said Mrs. Honeysett, holding her fat waist with her fat hands. “I shan’t come in; I ain’t got nothing to come in for.”

“We’ll bolt the door, all the same,” said Edred, when she was gone, “in case she was to think of something.”

He shot the great wooden bolt.

“Now it’ll be quite dark,” he said.

And, of course, it wasn’t. You know the aggravating way rooms have of pretending to be quite dark until you want them to be dark⁠—and then⁠—by no means! This room didn’t even pretend to be dark, to begin with. Its shutters had two heart-shaped holes, high up, through which the light showed quite dazzlingly. Edred had to climb up on to the window-seat and stuff up the holes very tight with crushed newspaper, to get which he had to unbolt the door.

“There,” he said, as he pulled and patted the newspaper till it really and darkly filled the heart-shaped holes, “now it will be quite dark.”

And again it wasn’t! Long, dusty rays of light came through the cracks where the hinges of the shutters were. Newspapers were no good for them. The door had to be unbolted and Mrs. Honeysett found. She was sitting in a little low chair at the back door plucking a white chicken. The sight of the little white feathers floating fluffing about brought wonderful memories to Edred. But he only said⁠—

“I say, you haven’t any old curtains, have you? Thick ones⁠—or thin, if they were red.”

Mrs. Honeysett laid the chicken down among his white feathers and went to a chest of drawers that stood in the kitchen.

“Here you are,” she said, handing out two old red velvet curtains, with which he disappeared. But he was back again quite quickly.

“You haven’t got a hammer, I suppose?” said he.

The dresser-drawer yielded a hammer, and Edred took it away, to return almost at once with⁠—

“I suppose there aren’t any tacks⁠—?”

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Honeysett, laughing, “there ain’t much sense locking that still-room door on the inside when it ain’t me that keeps all a-popping in, but you that keeps all a-popping out.”

However, she gave him the tacks⁠—rusty ones, in a damp screw of paper.

When he had hammered his fingers a good deal and the tacks a little the tacks consented to hold up the curtain, or the curtain condescended to be held up by the tacks.

“And now,” said Edred, shutting the door, “it really is⁠—”

Dark, he meant. But of course it wasn’t. There was a gap under the door so wide, as Elfrida said, that you could have almost crawled through it. That meant another appeal to Mrs. Honeysett for another curtain, and this time Mrs. Honeysett told him to go along with him for a little worrit, and threw a handful of downy soft white feathers at him. But she laughed, too, and gave him the curtain.

At last it really was dark, and then they had to unbolt the door again, because Elfrida had forgotten where she had put the matches.

You will readily understand that, after all this preparation, the children were at the last point of impatience, and everything seemed to go slowly. The lamp with the red shade burned up presently, and then the four pie-dishes were filled with water that looked pink in that strange light.

“One good thing,” said Edred, “the hypo has had time to melt.”

And now there was careful snipping, and long ribbons of black paper curled unheeded round the legs of the operators.

“I wish we were born photographers like the man who took Aunt Edith and you on the beach with the donkey,” said Edred nervously, as he began to pass the film in and out of the water in pie-dish Number One.

“Oh, be sure there are no air-bubbles!” said Elfrida; “you might let me do