The Short Cut. Jackson Gregory

her mother had been as patient and as contented waiting to get the picture she wanted of Wanda as Wanda had been in snapping the bird and the nest and the young, hungry mouths at the threshold.

      That afternoon they developed and printed, each her own pictures. And when Mrs. Leland had finished she showed Wanda what she had done. There was the picture of Wanda, far out upon the great limb, eager and watchful, her camera ready, the oriole's nest swinging before her, the mother bird just dropping down to it. And below and beyond were the ground, looking immeasurably distant, the fir and pine branches, the forest of trees.

      "You see, Wanda, what you have overlooked?" Mrs. Leland's eyes were unusually bright. "You have dozens of pictures that are wonderful, pictures that you strove for for weeks, months at a time! One looks at your picture and sees that it is wonderful, but does not understand how wonderful. You cling to a branch or a tree trunk or the side of a cliff, fifty or a hundred and fifty feet of space below you, and take your picture. People look at the picture and do not see that the wonderful thing, the interesting thing, is how you got it!"

      "But … " began Wanda.

      "But," Mrs. Leland laughed happily, "just listen to me a moment, miss. You are going on with your pictures and I am going to follow you very humbly and take other pictures to show how you get them. We'll send both sets to your magazines and you'll see if mine aren't snapped up just as quick as yours!"

      So the relationship of mother and daughter which had grown into that of a warm, intimate friendship now developed into closer, more intimate companionship. Together they found bright, brimming days that otherwise might have been dull and empty.

      Wanda came to realise that a woman who is forty may be, in all essentials, as young as a girl of twenty, and that the added score of years while it brings truer insight and perhaps a steadier heart does not quench ardour or deaden the emotions.