"Ellen--will you excuse me
while I run up and bring down an example or two of my work?"
She was back in a minute, several prints in her hand. She came around
behind Burns's chair and laid one before him, another before Amy
Mathewson. Ellen, who had already seen the prints, watched her husband's
face as he examined the photograph.
"You don't intend me to understand," said he, after a minute's steady
scrutiny, "that this is a photograph of actual children?"
Miss Ruston nodded. Her face glowed with enthusiasm over her work.
"Indeed it is. Flesh and blood children--Rupert and Rodney Trumbull.
And it's really the night before Christmas, too. They were not acting the
part--it was the real thing."
Burns continued to study the picture--of two small boys in their
night-clothes, standing before a chimney-piece, looking up at their
stockings, at that last wondering, enchanted moment before they should
lay hands upon the mysteries before them. The glow of the firelight was
upon them, the shadows behind held the small sturdy figures in an
exquisitely soft embrace. It was such a photograph as combines the
workings of the most delicate art with the unconscious posing of absolute
realism.
Burns looked from the picture to his wife's face. "We must have one of
Bobby like that," said he.
Ellen agreed, her eyes meeting her friend's over his head.
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