"
"Take my advice," said Tom, lazily leaning forward, "and don't bother
with a camera anyway."
"As if you expected any one to take up with such a piece of advice,"
ejaculated Jasper, in high disdain. "Say something better than that,
Tom, if you want to be heard."
"Oh, I don't expect to be heard, or listened to in the slightest," he
said calmly. "Anybody who will trot round with a kodak hanging to his
neck by a villanous strap--can't be--"
"Who's got a villanous strap hanging to his neck?" cried Jasper, while
the rest shouted as he picked at the fern-box thus hanging to Tom.
"Oh, that's quite a different thing," declared Tom, his face growing
red.
"I know; one is a kodak, and the other is a fern-box," said Jasper,
nodding. "I acknowledge they are different," and they all burst out
laughing again.
"Well, at least," said Tom, joining in the laugh, "you must
acknowledge, too, that I go off by myself and pick up my wild flowers
and green things, and I'm not bothering round focussing every living
thing and pointing my little machine at every freak in nature that I
see."
"All right," said Jasper, good-naturedly, "but you have the strap round
your neck all the same, Tom."
And Phronsie wanted to stay at the Riffelberg just as much; and old Mr.
King was on the point of saying, "Well, we'll come up here for a few
days, Phronsie," when he remembered Mrs.
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