ld
expect the joyous miracle of new life.

When the eggs were hatched Wanda was ready. Days before she had chosen
the exact spot on the particular limb where she would place her camera.
She had clothed herself as the springtime clothed the forests. A soft
blouse of green, short skirt and stockings of green, little cap of
green and green moccasins. She crouched upon the broad limb of a cedar
or clung more hazardously to the branch of a pine, the tone colour of
her costume making no discord with the dusky sheen of the waving
branches, and watched and waited. So, when "hunting" was good she had
a picture of the mother bird perched upon the edge of the nest in which
the eggs lay, a picture of the nest with the little, new birds obeying
the first command of nature, a picture of the parents feeding them the
first worm or berry or rebellious bug, a picture of the trial flight
when soft young bodies essayed independence on unskilful wings.

At first the girl had been merely an amateur in the early, sweet sense
of the word. Then one day she saw a couple of pages in an illustrated
magazine devoted to such photographs as these she was playing with.
They were better than hers, since the man who had taken them was a
trained artist as well as a lover of the wild; and they had been at
once a disappointment and an inspiration to her. Then, upon another
day, her father who made little comment upon her pastime, handed her a
box from the express office in which she found a camera with a lens
that would do its part if she learned to do hers. And that was when
she threw herself so enthusiastically into her "work."

"I am going to have a page of pictures in that same magazine," was her
way of thanking him. "And mine are going to be better!"

She flushed a little at his smile, but when she had gone away and was
alone with her new possession and a world of possibilities, her chin
was very firm.

She had her own studio in the attice above the dining room, developed
plates and films there, and descended the ladder into the hallway
flushed with triumph or vexed with disappointment as her efforts proved
to be good or bad. The mistakes had been many at first; they were few
now.

She became a student of the "Home Life of the Wild Things." They all
interested her, they all posed for her, squirrel and bird and
butterfly. Inevitably she began to specialise, but her specialisation
was not in one species but rather in one process, in th