Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/187

Rh finished odds and ends of housekeeping, Joan and Garth played the Miraculous Memory Stretcher. They had just finished a most hilarious bout, when Elspeth came downstairs with a large book in her hands.

"I'm going to inflict this upon you," she said, as she sat down beside Joan on the settle, "just like an old country wife with her 'fambly photygraph album.' But they're not 'cabinet portraits'; they're principally snapshots of Garth, so I thought you wouldn't mind."

"Why didn't you show it to me long ago?" Joan chided. "You knew I should love it."

"These at first are just of Jim and me, ages ago," Elspeth said, flapping over the pages; "not so interesting. Here's Garth—the first picture of him—aged three weeks."

"Did I really look so queer?" Garth demanded, leaning over his mother's shoulder. "I don't see why you liked me, I must say!"

"I did," Elspeth said. "You were ever so nice. He was older here, Joan; these are up to the time he was a year old. Don't you think he had an engaging smile?"

Joan did think so; she was very much interested.

"It's so hard to think of you as living