would be in deep, deep trouble.
Mr. Gardner was sorry, he wrote to Elsie’s mother, that the reporters had been coming around and pestering, but “with your help in Cottingley we will bring everything through quite all right yet. And none of you shall have the least cause to regret letting the photographs become public if I can help it. We will win through and Elsie and Frances shall be justified everywhere.”
Elsie’s mother wrote back, of course, as she always did. Her letters to Mr. Gardner were longer now, and friendlier. Elsie’s mother believed in the fairies now, just the way Mr. Gardner did. For surely, her daughter would never lie to her!
She believed Mr. Gardner when he said that soon the truth would come out, and that after that, no one would say Elsie and Frances were lying, ever again.
Mr. Gardner wrote to Elsie’s father, too, informing him that he, Mr. Gardner, had a secret weapon in the fight: the latest fairy photos. “I am keeping them back for the present because I want to keep them in reserve to sweep the board at the proper moment!” he wrote.
Elsie’s father wasn’t happy at all. And no matter how many times he asked Elsie what the trick was, she wouldn’t tell him.
Mr. Gardner wrote both Elsie and Frances, telling them to lock any copies of the newest fairy photos away in a secret place and tell no one outside the family.
But why would Elsie and Frances want anyone to know there were
more
fairy photographs? Things were bad enough with just the first two!
And besides, they had only taken the blue-flower fairy and the leaping fairy photos because the grown-ups made them.
And as for the last one . . . it was only shadows and tangles of grass. Why should they tell anybody about
that
?
Winter began to fade. Spring approached.
In bookstores and shop windows across England, the
Strand
’s Christmas issue had been replaced by the January issue, and then the February issue.
Then came the March issue.
“The Evidence for Fairies by A. Conan Doyle With New Fairy Photographs” said the headline on the front cover.
Inside were the pictures of the leaping fairy and the flower-bearing fairy. But the most exciting photograph of all, according to Mr. Gardner, was the third one. Mr. Gardner called it the “fairy’s bower.”
In the photograph, one fairy, her wings showing clearly, was “apparently considering whether it is time to get up. An early riser of more mature age is seen on the right possessing abundant hair and wonderful wings,” Mr. Gardner had written to Sir Arthur.
“We have now succeeded in bringing this print out splendidly,” Mr. Gardner wrote. “Never before, or otherwhere, surely, has a fairy’s bower been photographed!”
He didn’t say exactly what he meant by “bringing out” the print.
But now, there were fairy outlines in it that neither Elsie nor Frances had noticed before.
One afternoon, just as school ended, Frances and the other girls in her class were packing up their satchels to go home when the Headmaster came into the classroom.
He called Frances up to the teacher’s desk, and there, in front of all the other girls, he began to ask her questions about fairies.
“Well,” he said after a few minutes, “it would be interesting to have a few here in the classrooms.” Then he walked out.
The other girls all stared at her, and Frances felt like a “perfect fool.” Afterward, the other girls teased her about it. “Thinking about fairies, then?” they’d say if Frances didn’t answer a question right away.
“This is what I hated for years,” she wrote in her autobiography, “when people looked at me as though I weren’t normal and treated me as someone different from any other schoolgirl. . . . I was a normal ordinary girl and no one was going to look big-eyed at me or ask questions I didn’t want to answer.”
Frances promised herself she would never take another photograph.
Ever.
Mr. Gardner didn’t think Frances was a normal,
Mr. Gardner was sorry, he wrote to Elsie’s mother, that the reporters had been coming around and pestering, but “with your help in Cottingley we will bring everything through quite all right yet. And none of you shall have the least cause to regret letting the photographs become public if I can help it. We will win through and Elsie and Frances shall be justified everywhere.”
Elsie’s mother wrote back, of course, as she always did. Her letters to Mr. Gardner were longer now, and friendlier. Elsie’s mother believed in the fairies now, just the way Mr. Gardner did. For surely, her daughter would never lie to her!
She believed Mr. Gardner when he said that soon the truth would come out, and that after that, no one would say Elsie and Frances were lying, ever again.
Mr. Gardner wrote to Elsie’s father, too, informing him that he, Mr. Gardner, had a secret weapon in the fight: the latest fairy photos. “I am keeping them back for the present because I want to keep them in reserve to sweep the board at the proper moment!” he wrote.
Elsie’s father wasn’t happy at all. And no matter how many times he asked Elsie what the trick was, she wouldn’t tell him.
Mr. Gardner wrote both Elsie and Frances, telling them to lock any copies of the newest fairy photos away in a secret place and tell no one outside the family.
But why would Elsie and Frances want anyone to know there were
more
fairy photographs? Things were bad enough with just the first two!
And besides, they had only taken the blue-flower fairy and the leaping fairy photos because the grown-ups made them.
And as for the last one . . . it was only shadows and tangles of grass. Why should they tell anybody about
that
?
Winter began to fade. Spring approached.
In bookstores and shop windows across England, the
Strand
’s Christmas issue had been replaced by the January issue, and then the February issue.
Then came the March issue.
“The Evidence for Fairies by A. Conan Doyle With New Fairy Photographs” said the headline on the front cover.
Inside were the pictures of the leaping fairy and the flower-bearing fairy. But the most exciting photograph of all, according to Mr. Gardner, was the third one. Mr. Gardner called it the “fairy’s bower.”
In the photograph, one fairy, her wings showing clearly, was “apparently considering whether it is time to get up. An early riser of more mature age is seen on the right possessing abundant hair and wonderful wings,” Mr. Gardner had written to Sir Arthur.
“We have now succeeded in bringing this print out splendidly,” Mr. Gardner wrote. “Never before, or otherwhere, surely, has a fairy’s bower been photographed!”
He didn’t say exactly what he meant by “bringing out” the print.
But now, there were fairy outlines in it that neither Elsie nor Frances had noticed before.
One afternoon, just as school ended, Frances and the other girls in her class were packing up their satchels to go home when the Headmaster came into the classroom.
He called Frances up to the teacher’s desk, and there, in front of all the other girls, he began to ask her questions about fairies.
“Well,” he said after a few minutes, “it would be interesting to have a few here in the classrooms.” Then he walked out.
The other girls all stared at her, and Frances felt like a “perfect fool.” Afterward, the other girls teased her about it. “Thinking about fairies, then?” they’d say if Frances didn’t answer a question right away.
“This is what I hated for years,” she wrote in her autobiography, “when people looked at me as though I weren’t normal and treated me as someone different from any other schoolgirl. . . . I was a normal ordinary girl and no one was going to look big-eyed at me or ask questions I didn’t want to answer.”
Frances promised herself she would never take another photograph.
Ever.
Mr. Gardner didn’t think Frances was a normal,
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