"Well, you do look harmless," Walker agreed, "but then strange things do happen, especially to people who spend all their time taking pictures. How many have you got now?"
"Let's see there must be a dozen rolls upstairs," Nan admitted. "It will cost a fortune to develop them, won't it?"
"What do you say to my buying some developer and pans and whatever else is needed and taking them along to the hacienda with us?" Walker asked. "We could develop all your films there then, for practically nothing."
"I'd like that," Nan agreed enthusiastically, "but I thought you had some big story you were going to work on down there."
"Oh, that can wait." Walker Jamieson acted as though stories did wait for people and laughed at himself while he did it. "Anyway it will only take a jiffy to teach you all I know about the photography business."
So it came about that Nan and Walker went to the hacienda supplied with everything to develop pictures. How fortunate this was! But then that story belongs to later chapters.
"Well, eagle eye, how's the camera working this morning?" Laura inquired as Nan and Walker went out into the lovely patio of their hotel. "Want to take some pictures of me draped around one of those tall white pillars?"
"Do one of you strung from that balcony, up there, kid," Walker offered generously.
"Thank you, kind sir," Laura replied graciously, "but since I'm going to need my neck for a little while longer, I must refuse--with regret of course."
"On second thought, perhaps that is best," Walker agreed. "It would be a shame to spoil this lovely scene this fine morning."
"It is pretty, isn't it?" Nan looked about her with great satisfaction. The patio or courtyard so familiar to Spain is a part of the Mexican scene too, and this one where Nan was taking pictures was particularly lovely with its gay flowers, deep green foliage, and pond all surrounded by the pinkish colored walls of the hotel itself.
"Oh, but I hate to leave all this," Nan remarked when the pictures were taken and she and Laura and Walker were returning to the hotel lobby.
"And so do we," the other girls chorused, as the party all came together.
"Ah, you go, but you return." Walker sounded quite poetic as he said this. "And then, remember, you have no conception of the adventures the hacienda holds in store for you."