'clock before all were
properly ready, and Gram then decided to have our noon meal before
setting off. We got off a few minutes past noon. All the doors of the
farmhouse were locked, or otherwise fastened, the garden gate closed and
the horses harnessed. The Old Squire with Gram led the way in the
single wagon, and we six cousins, with Addison driving old "Sol,"
followed in the express wagon, three on a seat. We were conscious that
we presented a curiously holiday appearance and laughed a great deal as
we rattled along the road, although secretly each felt not a little
anxious.

"Oh, but it's nothing!" Halstead exclaimed over and over. "All you have
to do is to sit still a minute; the cammirror is the thing that does the
work;"--for he was a little shaky on the pronunciation of the word
camera, or the workings of it. To Addison and Theodora's great
amusement, he went on to inform the rest of us in a superior tone, that
the cammirror took a reflection from a person's face, much as a
looking-glass does, and then threw it on a "mess of soft chemical stuff"
which the artist had spread on a little pane of glass. "Being soft, the
reflection naturally sticks in it," Halse continued. "Then all the
fellow has to do is to harden it up--and there you are.

"But he has to be pretty careful, or you come out upside down," Halstead
added. "I had a notion of buying one of those cammirrors once, before I
came here, and starting in the business. I wish I had now. It is a sight
better business than farming. I knew a fellow out at New Orleans that
made thirteen dollars in one day, taking pictures."

"I wonder that you didn't get a 'cammirror,' Halse," Addison remarked.
"You might have become a rich man in a few years."

"Oh, but it's dreadful unhealthy work," replied Halstead, in an offhand
tone. "The chemical stuff they have to mix up gets into the lungs. It
smells terribly. There's two kinds. The worst-smelling kind isn't the
most unhealthy, though; the other kind you can but just smell at all,
but one good whiff of it will about use a man up, if it gets fairly into
his lungs. It doesn't answer for the artist fellow to breathe much when
he is in the little dark place, where he spreads the chemical stuff on
the glass. They generally hold their noses when they are in there."

"If that is true, we had all better be careful how we breathe much this
afternoon," Addison observed, feigning a very anxious glance around.

Little Wealthy loo